MoonsetI never saw a bomb blast rewind into its casing, circle of flame squeezing down the chimney of a brick house atop the near hill like a resin, liquid motion. This moon is not my moon, orange & fluid, self-erasing. It has places to go before the sun comes up, while I have this step to sit on, staring at dim space where a fire went out. NeighborlyIn the snow, he came like a phantom, like Eastwood in Pale Rider, descending the foot-dense roadblock, pale isolation. Mail truck barred from the cul-de-sac, he accepted a package from the postman: a proof copy of my book-- first since prison. I had given up hope of seeing it, its existing at all, as if the nor’easter had been Fate or God or Gaia saying, No, not you; not this. It could’ve been supplies he brought me: a bundle of meat for surviving winter, fire in a jar to prevent freezing. Not sure why I recall the happening now, other than guilt at my having been less neighborly. I seldom interacted with his house, except during school on my way to the bus stop when his King Charles spaniel would bark, & like that abyss inside me, I barked back. New Year's Eve, 2020We spend too much time thinking about death. It puts the fear of God in us, fear of the devil in us. If we don’t believe in either: fear. I’m trying to cling to hope like a lover who rescues & needs rescued in the night as dreams burn shrieking bodies from within. It’s hard to finish a novel chapter than ends in a cliffhanger-- sleek, exotic peril—so that one must read on. Read on, Reader. Don’t place the book on your shelf, forget. Finish this story, get to the good parts, reach a climax, fade at last into the long thereafter. Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, J Journal, Rattle, North Dakota Quarterly, Harvard Review, and many other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.
1 Comment
Paul Lastovica
10/26/2021 08:19:46 pm
I'm especially fond of "Neighborly"
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