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January 24, 2021

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en temps de peste

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It’s Day Eleven in West Virginia

  • April 9, 2020
  • 9:59 am
  • Appalachia
But, in Florida, day one.
ace wv

Ace Boggess

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But, in Florida, day one:

folks leaving the last party,

returning home to wash

sand from their sun-

diminished heads. 

They are like the legend

of soldiers still fighting

World War II from isolation

of their island jungle:

don’t realize they’ve lost,

carried defeat like shame

too long. On the news,

I hear that Florida’s governor

exempted religious services

from the prohibition

on public gatherings.

Goddamn it, Florida,

why do you always 

fuck things up

like that one kid in class

who forgets to bring a pencil

to the most important test

of his young life? 

My dad will go, 

despite his age, diabetes, 

recent cancer treatment.

He was as stubborn as Florida

long before he moved there.

Several states away,

I’m hunched over a notebook,

which has been my church,

attempting to figure out

how to say I won’t

see my father alive again.

 


 

Ace Boggess
Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021. Follow him on Twitter.

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2 Responses

  1. Pat says:
    04/09/2020 at 5:21 PM

    Damn. You sure can open eyes. I’m sorry about the situation.

    Reply
  2. Cathy Shea says:
    04/10/2020 at 11:21 AM

    You nailed it. I really feel the terrible predicament.

    Reply

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