Ace Boggess is an ex-con, ex-husband, ex-reporter, and completely exhausted by all the things he isn’t anymore. He 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 writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Atlanta Review, RATTLE, River Styx, Southern Humanities Review and many other journals. He currently resides in Charleston, West Virginia.
“And If It Comes to That, How
Can Any Man Be Called Guilty?”
—Kafka, The Trial
The sky threw a pastel quilt over everything
the evening I was innocent. I was innocent
when night tarred hills & highways,
feathered crooked treelines with clouds.
I slept little & don’t remember
what I dreamt. Perhaps dust burned
on the television’s never-ending face,
that household god with tears
of 1% static from the birth of the universe.
The coffee pot stank from old Maxwell House &
vinegar, or maybe that was the smell
of anticipation mixed with fear.
All around me, various clocks skewed time,
each trying to nudge another by a nose.
Still that soupy August dark:
it brimmed over mountains, spilling into town,
around alleyways & in through open windows
as if to preempt a coming day;
otherwise, to bury its dead with silence.
“What Do You Think I Should Do?”
[question asked by Lawrence Stroupe
after being rejected by the Parole Board]
If I were you I’d paint the outside
in still life, a freedom landscape,
utilize some post/neo-Cubist style
with angles so sharp they double back &
prick your thumb below the horsehair brush:
that blood is yours, each sting
yours & yours the added splash of flush
upon a stranger’s face on canvas—
suddenly it’s a stealing life,
a stage magician’s secret key
to facilitate escape. “The power to create,”
said Professor Ash, “is the power to destroy.”
Such power equals freedom
so the quest for power
remakes the quest for freedom
in its image. In all relationships,
said Nietzsche, exists a struggle
for power: even the act of sitting down
requires governance of will over
gravity, God & chair. Then,
that subservient chair in turn
defines its master as a portrait paints
its artist with every gasp & stroke.
If I were you I’d raise the brush,
conquer your world with crimson,
flesh tones, umber—create for yourself
an exit, a door on left
behind the table, the feast,
the dog, the brass lamp &
the girl in back &
through that doorway
grant yourself parole.
No Monuments
No Civil War general rides
a horse of algae-green
defending the prison yard.
No granite St. Francis
lowers his head like a circus elephant,
no marble Mary cups a hand
of five-card draw before her eyes &
no colorful cherry Christ
dismounts to walk amongst
the condemned masses. The many
do not look up to see
gnarled, snarling gargoyles
keeping angry watch like stone-
faced guards. No monoliths,
megaliths or obelisks rise
to prick the thousand tearless eyes of God.
No Easter Island faces
smile their many mysteries
around the basketball court &
benches. No milestones
mark the distance traveled,
no weeping matron mourns,
no headstones name
the numbers of the lost.
Blame
give me all of it
the heat from the sun
the torn curtains
the cat that died of age
heap on me
those layers of bricks
to build my sorrow house
with its chambers of regret
your louse job my fault
your rundown Chevy mine
your alcoholic father
I poured his first drink
& his last
if ever it comes
the tumors on your uterus
I cut you open by moonlight
my needlework swift
stitching curses
there
& there
it’s not enough
give me more
the long grass
rain pouring through the roof
your lover who left you
the hearses that mar your view
as they circle
round & round your home
in ugly parade
for a terrible holiday
###
These poems are from The Prisoners, copyright 2014 by Ace Boggess, published by Brick Road Press.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
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I survived my own imprisonment by averting my gaze, denying my jailers acknowledgement of their existence. I refused to look at them. Then, I turned it around and looked at them with compassion. I knew I would be leaving and they had to stay there day in and day out. I was innocent and they were not. It was their job to work on the destruction of other human beings. I got out.
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I love these three powerful poems. I’m so glad to have been introduced to hiiss work. All are good. My favorite is the first. My mentally-ill son is in state prison now, and all this has a familiarity about it. Yet, more important, I think his ring of truth will educate readers who do not have the awareness.
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