(PROSE POEM)
A HOUSE, LIKE TECHNOLOGY, SOON IS OBSOLETE
ACE BOGGESS
A HOUSE, LIKE TECHNOLOGY, SOON IS OBSOLETE
ACE BOGGESS
Repairman comes to replace the exhaust fan, garage-door motor, water pipe, tank, & learns nothing modern fits this house, its structure older, mechanics lasting beyond compatibility. He rubs his temples, wants to cuss, I can tell—familiar sentiment dealing with minor suicides inside the walls. He adjusts, wastes hours measuring absurdities of retrofitting. I watch, thinking of floppy mini-disks from my first Smith Corona word processor, too small & untransferable: thousands of words I needed to retype. Like those disks, this house is cursed with obscurity, a dungeon for handymen offering rack or iron maiden. I never intend to tighten the vise, but bones in a wrist will break before I’m done.
Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and two novels, including States of Mercy (Alien Buddha Press, 2019). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
