Speak to your late father in a language not his own.
Speak English to absent friends.
Listen to a blues record &
feel the joy of sadness.
Tell your angry lover
you’ve fallen into the sky & won’t come down.
Stand in a queue at the bus stop.
Don’t get on the bus.
Listen to what wind tells you.
It has never been misleading, never wrong.
--
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.