By Ace Boggess
As though you’ve cussed me on the phone,
the words lung & cancer slice kindness
from calls to talk about the weather.
You share your itinerary for the next two weeks,
play by play like a color analyst
bringing life to monotony of a baseball game.
We used to go to games—I was young & fell asleep.
We went to playgrounds & comic-book shops.
We discussed the weather, the goddamned weather.
I say used to as if you’re dead.
Further details suggest a pair of growths
some sci-fi robot surgeon will remove
with ease of a mean knife slicing bread.
I listen for distance between us,
look around for grave lights on the path.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including ‘Escape Envy’ (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), ‘I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So’, and ‘The Prisoners’. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American 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.
