Poetry from Ace Boggess

Photo: Shayna “Bepple” Take

Her Father Refuses Medical Treatment

Though he’s gone from working hard outside each day
to gingerly walking through the house,
stumbling, toppling—a clown act,

were he acting. I tell her to call an ambulance,
talk sense into him, keep him alive
as if he hasn’t given up.

Suddenness is the heart of the disorder.
All those years he spent preparing
for the collapse of society,

stocking up on dried goods, bottling beer,
training with weapons he invented
from everyday items & garden tools,

the fool never considered what would happen
if he went first, all his resourcefulness
useless to a daughter left to sift

grief from blackened earth.
I’m saying this as if he’s dead already,
but there’s time to save him

if he saves himself first, before
the final physician shines his penlight,
reads a name from a chart & shakes his head.
.

.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. 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.