Hotel Room in Fairmont, West Virginia
Curtains, off-white
with fat avocado stripes,
remind me of prison
which had no curtains,
but plenty of stripes.
Bed, not unpleasant,
not a thin mat over steel,
assures me I’m free,
although alone—
a different prison
I’ve wasted forty-
seven years inside.
Digital clock, television,
artwork of two leaves
embracing—not sure
what to make
of these accessories.
The hanging mirror swears
at least I haven’t
robbed today or waved
a threatening knife.
I’d look absurd
in my Hawaiian shirt
with pink & orange
birds of paradise.
Robbie
He looked cleanest among twenty of us—
young, pristine—a dozen years ago
in rehab, checking twelve-step boxes,
slinging Big-Book jargon like computer code.
I left that place for prison,
he the streets, & today his eyes swear
I drew a better pebble from the bag.
Bearded, shirtless, dirty, worn.
I don’t recognize him; he spots me first &
asks if & when & who?
His arms are scarred with a map
of beachheads in the existential war.
I want to tell him, It’s not too late, get well, move on.
Having been like him, I understand how history is written.
“What Evidence Do You Find of Your Life?”
—Heather Dooley, Facebook post
Gut-smudge impacts of spider genocide
mark my passage, &
theirs—
my absolute ever-war with fear.
Debts—those I intend to repay &
those that survive me—
I collect in a trove
for future scholars to acknowledge.
A few words in Times New Roman,
a few more in Garamond,
confessing
the bloody truth of lies I’ve told.
Broken computer gathering dust
in basement storage (it has
proof of my life before)
the man-I-am can’t power up to read.
Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.