Go to the store, collect frozen garlic loaf,
noodles, sauce, parmesan, & meat.
When it’s time to leave,
the self-checkout seems more self-
obsessed than self-aware, less AI &
more I quit. It freezes after the ultimate item,
tells me, Help is on the way,
which feels more self-defeating.
The clerk who comes to my rescue
is stoned out of his mind, staring,
rubbing at his faint goatee. “Sorry,”
he says, “I was mesmerized by your
garlic bread,” then tries to chat
about irrational imperatives of machines.
He’s so friendly I want to invite him
for dinner, see his glasses steamed
by sauce. I sense that he would love
a conversation more.
– Ace Boggess… ...continue reading
Waste another hour as if back in prison
when the world is elsewhere:
wall & razor made from snow flattening hillsides
with portraits of paleness, clouding roads,
filling in the potholes with despair.
I sleep as I did then, robbing time
from storm’s sentence.
Maybe I dream but awaken & forget.
The white river has come to rest,
trapping me in its natural penitentiary,
binding me with shackles I could break
out of, don’t dare risk my life
on a whim for pizza or sex, a trip
to the store or a concert in a lovely bar
where the pianist plays songs
of siesta, lulling me back to my cell,
convicted of warm-
blooded wanderlust, a weather pattern.
– Ace Boggess… ...continue reading
There was once a man who fell in love
with his own shadow. On a gloomy day,
along the pebbles-paved streets swept by
the sooty drizzle of Victorian London,
a clattering of hooves announced the fast
approaching of a horse-drawn carriage,
with at its reins a man in a black coat
and top hat turning back on the way to
the entrance of the graveyard he had crossed
after he had presided o’er his burial.
There, waiting by the sombre iron gate,
he found a woman with blonde hair
and a black cloth that sheathed her sockets
on which two eyes were drawn with chalk;
she raised her arms to him as he was passing,
and the man had a vision of himself
being thrown down in a freshly dug-up grave
while shovelled dirt was heaping over him,
with the moist scents of the night-dewed soil
imbuing its soft texture on his lips
pressed by the tasting of the woman’s kiss,
whom, as he sluggishly awoke from dreaming,
he found gone, with only the resulting pain
of an unearned oblivion being real.… ...continue reading
My mouth gnaws at your bloated
throat, clogged with plastic
straws and drawn-out footnotes.
This sagging jaw, broken by sorry
lovers, wags like a shredded red
flag. If I’m ranting nonsense,
I’m fed up. Lord, please remove
this cup. Inhale this smothering
fog with angelic chants. Release
the panting pups clawing
at your flawed law, jumping
at your heels. What must it be… ...continue reading
Desire closes off
my airway. My girl with her steady hands,
with her art-show nails, with her
little gold necklace she hasn’t taken off in years.
I was passed out in a Paris apartment.
In my dream: two necklaces. A fish and a fish skeleton.
Next day at the fair: fish skeleton necklace. A sign from
the high heavens that,
even though I was feral and rabid-confused,
fate seeked to leash me to her bike rack.
Who could forget our
vomit-speckled Honda civic and her sweet
indifference?
The science museum: the universe condensed
and made molasses so it could slip down
our seven-year-old throats and satiate the mouths that always
breathed out: why and how.
We both yearn for the days of cold, plastic dolls
and synthesized dramatics and finger foods.… ...continue reading
Last night: her first time in a hell I was familiar with,
The love song of the void, the sublimity
Of the open road and the way breath hitches
As the headlights strike. Standing in wait. And the grace
Of the driver and the lack of a collision.
The whole world opened like a peroxided
Wound.
Meanwhile:
I tried to stave off nausea a hangover couldn’t cure.
I paid for my own drink and gave it away.
I walked home: lone soul meandering on
The concrete.
I was shaking and
ragged-breathed like
A shot dog.
Cosmic thread strangled
My finger,
Semi-necrosis a sign from her
The world would soon end.
– AJ Powell… ...continue reading
On this dreadful August day
I knew,
my loyal friend,
my scruffy white shadow,
you’d soon be leaving.
Then the grocery delivery arrived,
forgotten order
left on the stoop
beneath the clearest cyan sky—
and as if to mock me
contained
the season’s most perfect watermelon.
I cut into its flesh,
so flawlessly ripe,
unable to taste its sweetness
or appreciate the pink
that on other days,
would have made me thankful
for such simple pleasures.… ...continue reading