Thursday, April 7, 2016

Is It Too Late to Keep Your Secrets Safe? by Ace Boggess

          - news tagline on CNN

I used to hold onto them like hundreds of pills
with side effects all forms of loneliness.
Secrets stink of empty rooms, dust on bookshelves,
dangling spiders petrified from grief & loss.
I won’t go back into that rundown house,
its blinds pulled, its door safely double-locked.                           
I prefer standing bare-skinned on a stranger’s lawn,
shouting, Look at me! Look! I’m a fool!
to know that even the ugliest truth soothes
like the cigarette after an argument.



Ace Boggess is the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

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