Mime struggles to climb an invisible ladder,
slipping on a rung to fall back down.
What it can’t see blinds—a neon atrocity,
vertical too steep & smooth
for the most skilled mountaineer.
Eyelash arms reach & slide, reach & slide,
pulling it nowhere
like a mouse I saw once trapped in a fiberglass tub,
no path to freedom, its talents wasted,
as with the spider’s, stranding it
surrounded by bodies of predecessors.
I won’t harm it;
I won’t come close to offer release.
It’s on its own, a prisoner of war
in a camp long abandoned by its guards.
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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.