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.