Inadequate Help

I counted twelve hundred drops of rain
to cull the drought in the desert
but at some indeterminate future
coordinate. There isn’t even a crowd

to be lost in anymore — human bodies
dissipate into pixels on a stuttering

screen. Listen to her voice. Listen
to his voice. What we are drinking

when we speak is a potent purple
cocktail: dragonfruit, chia,

pineapple, banana, ginger,
vodka, rum. I know you

are close when you made it
but the rain’s still far away.

James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in DASH, Sampsonia Way, and Raised Brow Press. He edits The Mantle Poetry and works in film production in Pittsburgh, Penn.