Five Poems by Ace Boggess

 

 

How Am I Here?

 

                         question asked by Attie Lee 

 

Prick & spark, amino acids in primordial ooze,

trilobites, fish, land-crawlers, dinosaurs,

death & death & death. The early apes do it,

did, & died. Skip to Mesopotamia or the Middle Ages.

Some slaughtered; others fled. Somewhere along the way,

ancestors of your ancestors packed up to move,

worked hard, purchased curtains.

You’re the recent recipient of a chain letter,

tasked with passing the curse to someone else.

Or is it a blessing? Who can see on a sun-

blinding beach? Isn’t everyone meek & a monster?

Survival of the fattest. I’ve got mine; get yours.

 

Don’t Go There

 

Don’t want to open the closet door,

find behind it a mouse

glue-trapped & petrified,

gray-brown coat its shroud.

 

Prefer not to check the crawlspace

where water could be pouring

from a copper pipe, all life a leak

waiting to empty us of hope.

 

Should I search the garage for rock salt

in a niche where spider eggs

have frozen on their webs?

I’ll have to pass. I’m serious.

 

I want no part of the nearby woods

where mounds of leaves shield

broken glass, all manner of wildlife

that could be underfoot.

 

As for the greater world?

Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t

spit on it if it caught fire. I’d rather

cup the flames & take them home.

 

My Fortunes Have Changed, or Have They?

 

Yesterday I thought about a novel

I’ll never write on the subject of prison.

A murder mystery, perhaps:

the six-pack of Pepsi did it

in the cell using shivs of sugar.

Or a sci-fi epic:

five years after I made it out

inmates would have iPads,

the sudden advance in technology

a new way to be ripped off by the state.

 

Of course, the book would be literary,

say things like man-stink

gave one the sulfur sense

of entering through Pluto’s Gate—

that we got used to it,

were we truly damned?

 

Ideas come. I laugh or nod,

then refuse to lift a pen, begin.

 

Not a novel I want to write,

it’s a hymn in praise

of nothing by no one,

a lone sweet line of music

to replace the noise

I hear when I think back. 

 

She Dreamt We Were Hanging Out with David Bowie 

 

Not dead, still dapper—

                                        later incarnation

in slick, stylish suit,

                                        wielding the wisdom of charm.

 

We took him to a restaurant.

 

She showed her tattoos,

                                        argued with the maître d’

that no one should

                                        make Ziggy Stardust wait.

 

It sounded like fun—

                                        a dream best had in sunlight

on a spring afternoon,

                                        napping under an oak.

 

But it’s winter, &

                                        all sleep is death sleep,

all visions ghosts,

                                        like his,

setting the fashion

                                        ex post facto,

a god in her pantheon

                                        of silenced voices.

 

 

Former Whitesnake Guitarist Bernie Marsden Dead at 72 

 

Couldn’t join the 27 Club,

reversed the numbers—funny

in that sad way one laughs

once a shadow has come &

passed. I never saw him play,

the entire Whitesnake lineup fired twice

prior to the show in ’88.

My favorite songs were blues-

rock tracks from years before,

Bernie on guitar, more soulful

than screeching. I still play

mp3 remasters to feel young,

depraved, a bit naïve.

Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025), and the short-story collection Always One Mistake (Running Wild Press, 2026). 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.