Bedside Light

fantasy world
castle door

sword glistening
at night

in this world
I love you nestled

on lumpy pillows
reading Tolkien

dim light
bed mirror glare

we must sell
everything

gloves
fingerprints

musty pages
grandma gave reading

buried imagination
rich with vastness

& escape

 

“Whispering” © Alex Duensing

 

James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Rust + Moth, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. He has won the William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest and been a finalist for the Princemere Poetry Prize.

Alex Duensing. Graduate of William Paterson and Columbia? Yes. Ran for St. Petersburg, FL City Council? Yes. Won? No. Stopped Mayan Apocalypse on rooftop with performance art? Yup. Strange but nice fellow? Clearly. Protégé of Arakawa+Gins, masters of the architectural body? Ongoing even after the supposed end. Able to create mechanical engines that run completely on the energy a person creates while appreciating a painting? On delightful rare occasions.