Characters – Ace Boggess

I read a book on obsession.
I’ve been obsessed with books
much of my life, & you,
a caricature in classical absurdity,
could be my muse should I write
my book on the thousand words
that are synonyms for, but not quite, love.
It would begin as in our conversations:
Funny, isn’t it? There,
if anywhere, I’d place us:
in a comic novel as the primaries
fall for each other or off a building.
We would be at ease at home
in the gray text/white margins
of our eyes. Of books,
I’d swear, This is our cosmos,
our summer home on the moons
of Mars, our final resting place—
ashes to ashes. No, it is ink to ink.

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.