Ace Boggess Was Just Saying
the other day how prison never leaves you
whether you’ve been in for a week
like celebrities with their holy money
or five years of medium
for me—a broke, begging junkie,
knife to my throat, or someone else’s.
It revs its engine in every conversation.
Did I ever tell you about that time?
Any room you’re in is cell-like,
inescapable. The mouse
that darts through your doorway
recalls another
that terrified cons at night,
who did their best with tools at hand
to end it. The German Shepherd
lauded on TV for heroic but Pavlovian acts.
Putting itself in danger
reminds you of trained dogs
sniffing your cut, leaving their stench
like warm mud on the mat.
Those closest to you wish
you’d keep to yourself about that time
you got punched in the eye
because you held the ace of spades
too cavalierly. No one wants to hear
of your sincere relationship with the commissary
or how you smoked tobacco
that entered the pen in a cavity.
It stays with you like college or a love affair.
Something you can’t erase, wouldn’t want to—
if you cut away pieces,
where would you stop, &
what would be left
after the umbilical & safety
that means nothing to you now?
Experience
Purple eye, jaundice-flecked, swelling
after another timber fist—different fist,
same blessing. Church of Holy Suffering.
Praise my hurt, weakness, want.
Waves broke against the shoreline of my cheeks.
Didn’t desire this; sometimes I deserved it.
A careless word, calculated error,
rage spontaneous as a gas blast.
All at once, uncalled for but foreseeable.
Like most men, I’ve taken beatings,
worn the silver medal proudly.
My hands don’t launch their javelins.
They flutter lightly like butterflies
landing sideways on a brittle leaf, a rose.
Ace Boggess is the author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.
Why we chose this piece: Ace’s voice is incredibly powerful, and his imagery and line breaks create vivid atmospheres. The endings of these two poems left us in a powerful daze.
