Retrospective
You needed a normal life; I needed attention—
both of us negligent drivers of intersecting cars,
adjusting radio knobs as one light reddens,
another greens. I couldn’t build a stable base
with sunlit gardens, a shade tree at one corner
of the property; I kept a cluttered junkyard in me,
flash-mobbed by rats & wild dogs.
You needed a normal life; I needed something
intangible like success or universal love.
I was a snow globe shattered on the street, & you,
you worked each job until it broke you more,
then moved on to the next, leaving you little time
to observe my fragments.
You needed children; I needed to be taught
the rate of decay of hope. I was a grocer who dreams, &
you were a shopper demanding to get your vegetables
scanned. I couldn’t place your produce in a sack
without reciting Shakespeare in dramatic pauses, &
you, who already heard soliloquies of tragic men,
didn’t see yourself waiting for the curtain.
*
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.
wonderful poem