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PROSE POETRY​

ACE BOGGESS


OPENING UP

She tells me of her adventures—I have fun with those, desperate watcher seeing through another’s lens—& disappointments—I grieve with her as though I, too, have lost a lover to the grave, displeasure, or return of an abusive ex. The whys go unanswered; the hows are lovely little passions like pornography in the oral tradition. Tell me your stories, I say, & she does, like a poet infatuated with the moon although a bit embarrassed by it. When we examine that moon together, like patient & therapist, we enter the place of transference, how we love each other: rooms joined by thin windows sharing a common view.
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​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.