Ace Boggess
No pork in the bacon; no fish in the fish.
Unspecified meat patty? Today,
it’s spicy-beef; tomorrow, chops.
All that cayenne pepper in the beans,
it burns—at least men feel something,
can’t quite place the taste
of desperation. Friday, it’s thigh of chicken—
real, scrawny, really scrawny—
call it pigeon. In the morning,
two cons fight over cereal, knockoff
Froot Loops blossoming in the air
like an explosion at a bubblegum factory.
Cream of wheat again? I’d rather drink
urine, says one man.
At least there’s a child-sized cup
of vanilla ice cream on holidays,
sometimes raspberry sherbet.
The Thanksgiving feast is turkey soup.
About the author
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025) and My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, has just been released from Running Wild Press.