He wonders why a bank would trust him
with numbers.
How many times did he get the money wrong
like a gambler with aces & awful luck?
Here he is with ten years in the black,
punching a code for his replacement card.
He has a few bucks & the free world
in which to spend them.
The figures don’t add up to much
but cast pretty shadows.
All the days he ran short, over drafted,
nickeled & dimed for dope, &
now…. He walks streets
with a free man’s gait, allowing his rap sheet
to fall away like a leaflet for a band
that played a concert yesterday.
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025), and the short-story collection Always One Mistake (Running Wild Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
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