by Ace Boggess
Upside Down
She’s upset because she killed her seedlings
by planting them upside down,
which sounds like a stoner thing to do
when you’re outside tearing earth
but your brain’s inside on the couch,
watching a movie or solving an unsolvable
equation. I don’t know enough about cultivation
to comfort her. Has dope or dope life changed
since I last smoked a joint in a Pizza Hut &
drove home afraid to make left turns? Ah,
to be free in the free, free world
invites catastrophes, misdirected farming,
falling down flights of stairs,
or starting with the opening credits
of what might be the greatest film of all time,
falling asleep a beat before the end.
*
I Visit Graves of Those I Didn’t Know
With friends or family, what could I say?
We weren’t close. We laughed,
argued, came to blows.
We played music in late-night cafes.
One of us stole from the other.
One of us held the other’s hair
after a night of drinking toward decline.
Stranger, I can talk in a friendly tone,
not anticipate scorn
for personal wrongs or failure
to stop by sooner on a sunnier day.
I’d rather grasp fictions of why
condoms have been placed, wrapped,
near your stone
or plastic elephants on parade
march across grass
next to your plot, above
a cluster of children laid to rest.
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025), and the short-story collection Always One Mistake (Running Wild Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
