Ace Boggess
A Good Meal Is a Happy Death
Anxiety plates piled with loneliness,
magnets attracting & reflecting
in the harmony of uncertainty.
A few minutes more, & we will sit to eat
as though normal folks in an old-world clan.
Scent heightens my solemn passage.
It sobs, rages, sighs. I hear sauce burble
like a codex in the verbal cooker,
like footsteps of a stranger in this restaurant
where staff are distant, dreaming grocers,
each performing Lady Macbeth unravelling
the fabric to bare her undoing. At least
as we celebrate our rosy coronation
there will be banquets in the early acts.
Ant Versus Spider
Tug of war beneath the planter.
Ant is stronger—Mr. Universe
among the crawling things—
but spider has a tighter grip on rope.
Back & forth, a battle,
narrowing the gap.
It's like Heracles against the hydra,
minus fire. Spider's
milky beige descends
from shadow underneath the rim:
hero fleeing enemies
out the highest window in a film.
Ant bucks stallion-like, tumbles,
nearing its end in a sudden world:
one's either feasting or the feast,
warring whether victim or a beast.
Post Op
poison in her blood
drains into a bulb
she reaches for a jug of water
moans
gives up
too much effort to be helpless
she doesn't want help
she wants water
a walk to the restroom
not to feel flushed &
ailing
she thinks she would not come here
to save her life
although she did
the machine feeding her antibiotics
through an IV line
pings its steady pattern
announcing it is empty too
Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, River Styx, Cream City Review, and American Literary Review, among others. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.