GAS Featured Poet: Ace Boggess

 

"Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble." 

Freudian Slip

 

 

Sometimes while telling a story about my early days 

in prison, without thinking, I say during my first semester—

a Freudian slip like in the joke about the airport guy 

requesting two pickets to Tittsburgh &, 

like in the joke, it’s kind of funny & kind of sad. 

That was where I began my second education. 

My new university an aquarium full of piranhas, 

I was the clumsy, curious cat who fell in, 

somehow made it out with a few wounds 

that turned to scars I lick & lick & can’t erase. 

I learned a lot during my first semester: 

how pungent scents of watermelon hooch & 

pepper spray will cause a man to weep 

into the collar of his undershirt; 

how one must turn his head from the fist 

that hunts his face; not to mention 

how noises of voices, slamming cards, &

radio static won’t go away. 

To sleep, one finds silence within, 

a place of peace in a warzone—

Places of Peace in Warzones the title of a course 

during my first semester, which I say & 

shake my head at the joke so like the other joke 

that ends with the line You’ve ruined my life.

 

 

Anthology

 

 

So curious to see these poets’ early work

so old & out of touch I don’t connect with it.

 

So, Ashbery already wrote his inside jokes

he alone was on the inside of.

 

So, there’s James Tate writing normal lines

with none of the fantasia of his later mind.

 

So much so-so that must have been magnificent

when rhymes, angels, & ancient Greeks called to us.

 

So: Rich, Meredith, Merwin, Valentine—

a lot to take in, marveling at how they grew

 

so far beyond these early perceived greatnesses,

enchanted then by their sex lives &

 

so enthralled with love, loving, beloveds.

I’m glad I’m taking this journey with them

 

so I can say I’ve travelled in a time machine, &

oh the things I’ve seen & soon forgotten.

 

 

 

Impostor Syndrome

 

 

Do marathon winners doubt themselves, 

believe if they were better

they would’ve crossed the line a minute faster,

see failure in success, their trophies

too small, their payouts token?

 

What about farmers? Why are their rows so crooked?

As the sun rises above their plots

like a laughing emoji, surely they dread

how small & inferior their ears of corn must be, 

how green & hard their tomatoes. 

 

Writers & artists can’t be the only ones

who look at their work & say, I’ve never

created anything beautiful,

challenging, magnificent, or worthwhile.

 

Consider the divorce lawyer 

whose briefs present too much sentiment,

the trucker hauling ass a bit too slowly 

through the mountains

as if driving a tractor-trailer made of stone.

 

What of the surgeon cutting into a patient’s brain?

Do we want her disbelieving, 

doubting skills she acquired over years?

 

Here we are with our pens & paints,

unable to excise tumors or harvest a sizeable yield.

 

The sun above our heads keeps laughing, &

we want to lose control of our wheels

doing sixty on I-68 at a six-percent grade.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Ace Boggess

 

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, Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

“How Will We Know When It’s Over?”

 

                               [question asked by Pat Eskins]  

 

 

When circling buzzards cease to swarm

          above empty dining halls & bars

along the gray city’s gray, blank streets;

 

when masks fall without animosity 

          into the art of a next historic movement

recorded on cell phones instead of canvas;

 

when passersby on the sidewalk no longer wince 

          at muted rumbles of a dry cough

(could it be so?);

 

when music returns, & bands slapping

          their funky sounds from instruments,

a live mic before an audience; 

 

when there is dancing—slow-dancing,

          feverish, frantic, feet-burning-

the-dancefloor dancing, wild & pagan; 

 

when scientists have finished their rite

          of communion

converting the masses to a safe religion;

 

when men & men & women & women whisper

          across the recently silent sheets

that love is the great contagion—

 

we will say Ah ha! as though we found time

          frozen underground & cloned it

from cells of its still-sweet marrow,

 

loosed its replica, saying Resume, life! Resume, 

          customer service! Resume, companionship!

pretending all is well as if all is well.

“Who Will We Be When We Take Off Our Masks?”

 

                               [question asked by Karen Van Kirk]  

 

 

Alive, a word that comes to mind,

but what about the secret face

laughing, sardonic, for months?

No one observed our expressed derision,

except as eyes tell stories—

some loud as if in neon,

others mutterings of a mountain saint. 

There we were with our judgments,

mocking through a veil like brides

plotting arsenic for their husbands’ wine.

 

Can we return to the rictus of a smile,

the straight lips of no revelations?

We must retrain our muscles

lest we resemble monsters,

the world so full of monsters

as to be a monster dormitory.

Alive means brutal self-

fulfillment. Our smiles always were

the lie we told to others for their ease.