​Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is the 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, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble.
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​​SOMEWHERE ELSE IS PARADISE​
Sidewalks carry burn marks of old blood.
Tornados thumb earth, &
no one need tell anyone to duck.
Sounds of bullets
could be jammers on kazoo around the corner,
aided by percussion of their guns.
Road rage is a neighbor’s casserole,
saying Hello & Welcome.
Even a ghost town would be heaven
compared to the city of my birth
where denizens greet me
with depression as the secret handshake
in their fraternal order of despair.
Sadness, that blackened knife,
stabs eyes of friends & strangers.
I have tried to leave for decades,
no god looking on to say,
Cast aside your blues & follow me
NOT HERE, NOT NOW​​​
I want to try something, says one.
Don’t get mad, says another.
I’m dressed in sweats & restlessness like a jogger
standing by a window, watching for rain to end.
I ask myself would I like company &, if so, what kind?
The answer changes. One day, it’s a woman
with a pet raccoon; the next, a man who knows
obscure quotes from films I might have seen.
Poets, too, use my bed for a journal
filled with sloppy script & impressions of kisses.
Financiers come to appraise me, depreciate
the value of my bed, list shortcomings.
I’m holding out for surrealist statesmen
or at least a waitress
who brings me apples & grapes
when I’ve ordered well-done steak with a glass of milk.