Three poems by Ace Boggess

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.




Picture of Ace Boggess

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.