Ace Boggess: Three Poems

Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
 

*****

The English Language

 
I love it because as I it is not true
neither precise nor consistent in its public face
a hodgepodge of mimicry
it lacks the illusion of permanence kept by glass
how it twists shifts undulates
splatters like a paint can smashed against a concrete wall
sometimes it stops to pick corn from its teeth
finding behind each kernel daffodils
a language of the dead who cross all borders
the jazz vocabulary & the silent prayer before a beggar’s feast
with its constant weeping
it might seem less poetic than the French
after years of diets & cursing
it has learned a sort of comfort with itself

*

Dead Spiders                                  

innocent this time of their murders
I discover them—quarter-sized brown arthritic claws
in a box of old books
in corners dangling from the gallows of their sturdy webs
under the bed goldfish belly-up &
by discover I mean encounter things already there
while dewy-eyed I was unaware
less than half the poet I thought to be so unobservant in my home
what is a wolf without its snarl?
the mean moonlit glint of its killing stare?
I never saw them making rounds at night
now I cringe at having missed out
on a chance to tremble—oh knowledge
I regret you as you leave me scared of nothing

*

Overdose 

theirs was a fantasy of misery
uncanny yearning for discord
a Romeo & Juliet
with heroin
he could’ve drank the night
with her
the two of them
found cyanotic in her drive
if only she stirred
once
to say I love
oblivion
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