THREE POEMS
ACE BOGGESS
POEM I
'WHAT IF I JUST KEPT DRIVING?'
- Question asked by Brooke Donahoe
Through mountains littered with scars,
along the ash-line into otherwise.
South to the sea or west the Mississippi,
north past the world’s largest tea cup.
Towns built around prisons, mines,
towns that have neglected their names.
Farther on past signs for sex toys,
Jesus, fireworks, Adopt-a-highway
where charity pays for convicts
to walk the shoulders holding sacks.
On past churches like indecent beaches
with their crumbling spires,
past fields of corn, wheat, tobacco
stinking like a corpse flower in bloom.
You will cross more rivers
than your scholar’s mind remembers,
a blur of syllables as America
is fuzzy with love & hate,
promise & denial, sameness &
freedom in a light-blind haze.
POEM II
"SHOULD THERE BE A SPACE BETWEEN THE QUESTION MARK AND GOD?”
—proofreading note
Does one space open a door to the agnostic?
How about ten? A tab? Ellipses? Lord,
ellipses!
Meaning has many, even before factoring
relativism,
subjectivism.
What if the One is god of the question?
How to reply—yes/no, true/false, either/or,
by multiple choice
or essay—&
still show humility?
To have an answer usurps the holy.
To guess equals heresy.
For now, the gap:
our need for a hole to be filled with others
keeping us distant as the Word
from the accident.
POEM III
'AM I WALKING INTO A TRAP IF I ASK IT NOW?'
- Question asked by Marne Wilson
When you run out of answers,
simplest questions seem the most profound,
confounding. Can walk around in them for hours,
never find a corridor out.
I was braver once. That’s a lie. I’ve always been afraid
of all but questions. I enjoy plumbing their mysteries,
learning as I turn each corner.
It feels good to pretend I’m Theseus hunting the hunter,
rather than another sacrifice. Yes,
ask, & I will answer in a manner that summons monsters--
mine, yours, the postman’s, the president’s.
This is how we spring the trap, confront a bull charging,
listen, without judgment, to its bellow.
'WHAT IF I JUST KEPT DRIVING?'
- Question asked by Brooke Donahoe
Through mountains littered with scars,
along the ash-line into otherwise.
South to the sea or west the Mississippi,
north past the world’s largest tea cup.
Towns built around prisons, mines,
towns that have neglected their names.
Farther on past signs for sex toys,
Jesus, fireworks, Adopt-a-highway
where charity pays for convicts
to walk the shoulders holding sacks.
On past churches like indecent beaches
with their crumbling spires,
past fields of corn, wheat, tobacco
stinking like a corpse flower in bloom.
You will cross more rivers
than your scholar’s mind remembers,
a blur of syllables as America
is fuzzy with love & hate,
promise & denial, sameness &
freedom in a light-blind haze.
POEM II
"SHOULD THERE BE A SPACE BETWEEN THE QUESTION MARK AND GOD?”
—proofreading note
Does one space open a door to the agnostic?
How about ten? A tab? Ellipses? Lord,
ellipses!
Meaning has many, even before factoring
relativism,
subjectivism.
What if the One is god of the question?
How to reply—yes/no, true/false, either/or,
by multiple choice
or essay—&
still show humility?
To have an answer usurps the holy.
To guess equals heresy.
For now, the gap:
our need for a hole to be filled with others
keeping us distant as the Word
from the accident.
POEM III
'AM I WALKING INTO A TRAP IF I ASK IT NOW?'
- Question asked by Marne Wilson
When you run out of answers,
simplest questions seem the most profound,
confounding. Can walk around in them for hours,
never find a corridor out.
I was braver once. That’s a lie. I’ve always been afraid
of all but questions. I enjoy plumbing their mysteries,
learning as I turn each corner.
It feels good to pretend I’m Theseus hunting the hunter,
rather than another sacrifice. Yes,
ask, & I will answer in a manner that summons monsters--
mine, yours, the postman’s, the president’s.
This is how we spring the trap, confront a bull charging,
listen, without judgment, to its bellow.
ABOUT
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.