Don’t Throw Yourself on the Mercy of the Court

By Ace Boggess

Socks can be a prison if restraining your feet

from dancing on slick rocks in the nearby creek—

escape plan you created on your way to Happy Drive & 

no remorse. That coat you wear—dull, ashen—& 

the attaché you wield confine you to a windowless room.

You’ve been jailed by stone-eyed gaze of your routine,

all your boring suffering. You’d rather be beaten 

by truncheons to feel sensual ferocity thrumming rhythm 

against your skin—it reminds you living is best 

when you don’t forget someone wants to murder you 

with a litany of little wounds in a locked room, 

but hasn’t succeeded yet, & there’s the door.

* 

Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra
Deep Field (Brick Road, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody
(Hyperborea, 2016). He is an ex-con, ex-reporter, ex-husband, and
exhausted by all the things he isn’t anymore. His poetry has appeared
in Harvard Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Rattle, and many other
journals, including a previous issue of Bosphorus Review of Books. He
lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

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