Tag: Ace Boggess

Two Poems by Ace Boggess

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Today You Go Before the Board

I sat in your chair,
one like it,

staring at leering
stone gargoyles—

in folklore,
protectors from demons.

I smiled as I trembled,
couldn’t help it.

An end neared,
even if those strangers

with learned distrust &
bitterness

said no. At worst,
I found the floor,

however long it took
to walk across.

Your turn to seek
the neon Exit sign,

say a few words,
be judged again,

perhaps go home,
whatever home is,

as if each day
the cell

hasn’t grown
more snug.

*

Mysterious Radio Signal from Proxima Centauri

I hope it’s classic rock with grind & sleaze,
wailing voice of an ET diva
lamenting deaths by supernovae
of ten thousand suns.

None of this boring jam-
band trip of natural explanations
like pulsars, quasars, cosmic bounceback
of radiation, remnants of the First Note,

Big Bang. Let the sound be hardcore
funky, putting a tune in our tone-
deaf ears. Don’t say it’s nothing,
a loud lie from the heavens.

We need a roar with escape velocity
to understand how a song can be
the most important evidence
of life.

*

Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025) and My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly 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 first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, is forthcoming from Running Wild Press.

Retrospective by Ace Boggess

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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.

Upcoming Reading: Sunday, 10/27 — 7pm Eastern

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Sunday, October 27 — 7pm (Eastern)
Featured Poets: Ace Boggess, CL Bledsoe, Anton Yakovlev, Jason Gordy Walker
Tickets available here (Free or Donation)

~ About The Featured Poets ~ 

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.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Anton Yakovlev’s poetry collection One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean was published in 2024 by Redacted Books, an imprint of ELJ Editions. His chapbook Chronos Dines Alone (SurVision Books, 2018) won the James Tate Poetry Prize. The Last Poet of the Village, a book of translations of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, came out from Sensitive Skin Books in 2019. Yakovlev is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks: The Ghost of Grant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015). Originally from Moscow, Russia, Anton is a graduate of Harvard University and a former education director at Bowery Poetry Club. More info here.

Jason Gordy Walker’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Confrontation, Measure, ONE ART, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. X: Alabama, among other places. His reviews and interviews can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and the blogs of Dos Madres Press and NewPages. He has received scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Poetry by the Sea, and other institutions, and he earned his MFA from the University of Florida and his MA from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Currently, he lives in Alabama and practices translating Norwegian poetry.

Parole Denied by Ace Boggess

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Parole Denied

The victim spoke unforgiving words.
Now members of the Board won’t hear your pleas
or see redemption when the noise of loss re-grieves.
They tell you no, condemning you again
for actions seven years ago in drugged numb

of absent self-control. You should be home,
smoking a thin cigarette, telling your friends
your heart has filled with love.
Now you squeeze hurt into a stone.
Pity the head that rests on it—jagged, hard.

*

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.

Two Poems by Ace Boggess

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“What Does Living Do to Any of Us?”

               —Tracy K. Smith, “The Searchers”

We define ourselves by thrills, aches, sadnesses, &
laughter. I, too, have listened to Bowie

while looking at the stars & felt the fugue state
of space pulled through stereo speakers;

I’ve hit my head on the ground staring at the firmament.
The hedges offer louder music. Same woods

hide serpents. If we watch each step,
the concert won’t be interrupted by our grief.

*

“What Will You Do When It’s Over?”

             question asked by Mary Carroll-Hackett

Confess: I will lay my vaccinated body
against others, any,
as though I were young,
as though it mattered, any-
thing mattered aside from breathing.
Disaster is the bride of debauchery.
Wars: sex. After the Towers: sex,
also drugs, prayers, ice cream.
Name one catastrophe
that didn’t lead to mindless
desperate groping in dim rooms?
I joke about the post-pandemic orgies,
but in the Middle Ages, didn’t they,
after plague & past the culling?
Think Renaissance, think Enlightenment,
think I don’t want to think any-
more, just breathe & be
with others in whatever origami swans
our skins will fold, our hands
tenderly shaping reassurance.

*

Ace Boggess is the 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.

“Where Is the Pain in Your Life Right Now?” by Ace Boggess

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“Where Is the Pain in Your Life Right Now?”

                                                        — religious pamphlet

Hurt sings like a bluesman in your bones.
Hurt pleads for mercy from your bones.

What are bones but memory’s fossil record
to prove the science of you, evolution?

How they cry—how do they? Do they
scream like a train’s metal braking over tracks?

Do they silence? Would you, if you could, forget?
Come, accept this balm, this whisper in a canyon of regret.

*

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.

Smoldering by Ace Boggess

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Smoldering

Hillside burned, burning.
Trees, fallen, smoke
from wet black ends
like a lit cigarette
dropped on a rain-slick walk.

Leaves resemble paste of ashen paint
on the left, opposite the Elk River
as we pass along a rural route to her dad’s.

“It happens out here,” she says.
“Nobody pays attention.”

My head fills with newsy images
of far-off California
where flames look as if they burst
from a million wicks. Here,

no fire cares to aggravate the populace.
It keeps to itself, smoldering inward.

Same an hour later when I double back alone.
No fire trucks, spectators.

The end of the world came & went, &
none of us noticed, which,
I suspect, is what it always does.

*

Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021.

Words by Ace Boggess

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Your words are a drug
to quicken my focus
for a long journey,
rest me nestled in dark at night,
add vigor, which is a sort of hope.

I crave your words
as I would an addiction
I know well, shouldn’t
return to, will.

They maintain my heartrate
at its steady racing, treat
my cancerous lethargy.
Your words, praise them,
bring euphoria & stillness.

Could save my life with capsules
of your words. Your words
I swallow greedily
as if a squirrel
that found a stale bun.

 

Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021.