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, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.
[question asked by Randi Ward]
ACE BOGGESS
“ARE THERE MANY PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE YOU TRUST?”
I’m left with doubts,
afraid of a city I enter every day,
exit unfulfilled; afraid of night’s absences.
Once there were many companions,
but who would drive cross-country to rescue me
from a foe that can’t be genuine?
The ones I believed in have fled the battlefield
of daily rituals, or I have,
returning to the city of my birth
where I never felt safe, at home, or welcome,
though redbuds purple in bloom,
affectionate, & cars pull close
as though drivers might love me if I weren’t
a pothole on their happy road.