Poetry by Ace Boggess from ULTRA DEEP FIELD
Potato Chip Sandwich
the beauty of poverty
is its compulsion to invention
lighting cigarettes off the stove
extending the life of toilet tissue
the potato chip sandwich
Lord the potato chip sandwich
riffled valleys crunching on a bun
unity of firm & soft
salty & muted as a chaste kiss
twigs snapping once twice
casting off hunger
like Neruda’s sad nets
into that fulfilling sea
of his lover’s eyes
The Times
earbuds plugged into their aural sheaths
I’m listening again to classic Dylan
his indiscreet protests his cries of contempt
for bloodshed & also indifference
his day’s culture clung to like a rock deep in the flood
until he came along until he enchanted them with outrage
left them amped & pissed & fighting back
I try to understand this to take it in
as I’m bobbing bird-like to the strum &
there he goes once more soloing on his harmonica
each tone trilled hits my broken molar’s nerve
like ice cream or an errant dentist’s drill
I wince grunt hold my breath
bite my lip to suffer back the ache
hoping the guns along the front will silence
hoping the bone saw will cease to carve the dead
this is how you relate to the horror the horror
the angst & misery of that distant time
you close your eyes & grit your teeth &
come to it not with empathy but with pain
The Frozen Breath
in weeks
after the Towers fell
I often read how attendance
at religious services went up
as with promiscuous sex
drug & alcohol abuse
& aggregate sales
of ice cream
God is always good for a catastrophe
one understands the impulse
to orgasm & oblivion
but how do people convert
a metropolitan nightmare
into Neapolitan delight?
why are there no country songs
about drowning sorrows
in a Creamsicle shake?
maybe we needed the frozen breath
the icy inhale off a chocolate sundae
to quench fires
we still saw raging from that day
the demon face of smoke & flame
newspapers flaunted
as the internet scripted it into legend
maybe we wanted to feel the innocence
of childhood
when what we knew of war
was a ballgame
followed by a slice of pizza
dripping off its plate
maybe God’s phone lines were busy
while our bodies
rejected their secret pleasures
& escapes
maybe we just hoped to forget
life was ever anything but sweet
The Test
into a cup I pour my admission of innocence
temporal evidence in the body’s court
another day passes a month a year &
suddenly half a decade devoted to the Grail
how it tests one’s purity
despite the bloody errantry of past crusades
the heat strip lights up like Mars in transit
as black bars in pairs appear like a prison made from night
all because I gave myself release
expressed my nature in line art to the critic cup
it tells me not that I can do no wrong
but that wrongs I’ve done are done with
for at least this pause this sighing hallelujah
I walk without daggers in my eyes
without regrets without new ones anyhow
this golden mead this liquor of sobriety
Breath
I’m listening to Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2
on my Sony Walkman & what stands out
is not the melody the speed the passion of the soloist
but her breathing—it must be a her with dark hair tied back
one lonely strand straying dangling sticking
to her damp forehead like grass to the mower’s blade—
when she takes in the wind she recycles into riffs wildly dancing
as if from the electric guitars of Whitesnake or Van Halen
each inhale so sudden in its execution
adds its own sound to the songbird assembly line
a new fluttering for a showroom at the whistle factory
so perfectly placed like jazz notes blue as a drunken melancholy
it is as though the master himself in his genius his wisdom
wrote each gasp onto the clef as though a chord & also rest
yet he could not have anticipated the compact disc
headphones & proximity to sounds or orchestrations
so this is not his music but hers as she leans back
forgotten amidst the forest of the stage
her lips clawing hungrily for air &
mocking the fury of some first maddening kiss
while she gives back & she gives back
a translator adding flourishes to these forgotten words
Repentance
I always take time to read poems titled “Apology”
I crave the plot the narrative arc of the noir
in otherwise blissful sometimes centered hearts
all that anecdotal evil or at least
bad things briefly ventured like oaths
fighting words a finger extended upward
practical jokes gone beyond their parameters
who tenderly kissed his lover’s sister?
who picked a pocket? filched a note?
intended tearing the heirloom velvet portrait of a horse?
I want this: all the guilt & suffering
some so freely give away
I love the violence the madness the blood-hunger &
especially the passion lust desire
all the unnatural acts men commit
to practice the wholly natural ones
so I delve again & always into these artful confessions
seeking the pin on which ugliness & beauty have their dance
hoping too that I will see you there
asking for forgiveness showing remorse
as you admit how you hid the constellations &
how you should have given me the sun
Something Important
my mother says “don’t write about me
write about something important”
which could mean torn limbs of children
after a bomb attack in Syria
or nature’s stormtroopers battering coasts &
attacking through faulty tectonic plates
yet more likely invites some fiction
about the mysteries of blood
that will sell a million copies
like a hardback bible of these escapes from other torments
I once told her I was reading a Michael Connelly book
about a baby-raping cop killer &
she said “good maybe you’ll learn something”
which she didn’t mean the way it sounded
but as a comment on the economics of popular prose
what is something important enough to write about?
just fantasy sticking its tongue in the ear of finance?
what of wars? or desires?
maybe it’s the ensorcelling perfection of a sunrise
tranquility from fields of unblemished snow
she in silhouette between these things
walks outside to collect the daily paper
her breath crafts concrete poems in the air
for now I find this image is enough
The English Language
I love it because as I it is not true
neither precise nor consistent in its public face
a hodgepodge of mimicry
it lacks the illusion of permanence kept by glass
how it twists shifts undulates
splatters like a paint can smashed against a concrete wall
sometimes it stops to pick corn from its teeth
finding behind each kernel daffodils
a language of the dead who cross all borders
the jazz vocabulary & the silent prayer before a beggar’s feast
with its constant weeping
it might seem less poetic than the French
after years of diets & cursing
it has learned a sort of comfort with itself
The Eye
disappearing from the eye is death in the opinion of the eye
which does not understand the distinction soon but merely never
a stranger stepping behind the house has fallen from a precipice
the neighbor’s collie runs off following a straight line to infinity
I must at no time leave my lover by herself
she would make a ridiculous corpse
ever hateful & forgetful is the eye a brutal despoiler of reminiscence
although at least discreet in its genocide
I cannot sleep tonight I cannot sleep for fear
my eye in the long dark destroys the world
Rubbernecking
do not feel guilty though you are first to slow &
see that delicate form facedown by the stone barrier
a carpeted cadaver its lilac skin
not grayed by fall defeat & passing
no murder of crows will come to eat its guts
no overlord of highways hurries to remove its soggy meat
yet somewhere there is mourning for tenderness
those ears half-cocked as if tucked low for Mass
though no unction however extreme
will part the candied gates
now as you accelerate away from sorrow
you contemplate the land-bound dead man’s float
the lack of tire tracks & torn limbs
was it suicide by open window?
was there a push into the path of an oncoming ice-
cream truck boldly ringing its funereal bells?
tonight comes silence as black as beads for eyes
strange & unforgiving calm
a lime-green bunny on the bed
leans into absence surrendering tears of dust
A Woman’s Apartment
entering a new one that first time
penetration of the doorway’s defenses
seeing the private inch by inch
like peeling away a sweater or long flowered skirt
step in & bring the tension with you
how it rubs against anticipation in your chest
each footfall is a conquering
each a plea for unshackling from business hours
why do you hesitate staring
at rows of books that define a shelf & a life
when your eyes wish to seek out ends
of dark hallways & all that stays hidden?
of course you sniff the air for traces
where a candle burned its berries & cinnamon
what now? do you sit with palms on knees?
or wait to be directed through the mysteries?
this is what you love not the lips or skin
but the strangeness after the invitation
how you would scrub dishes stacked in her sink
to steal a glimpse of floral patterns on her plates