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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.

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