By Ace Boggess
No need to see its black legs like piano keys,
the sharps & flats. “A spider,”
says my mother’s house cleaner,
stabbing her paper towel against the metal sink.
“It won’t die,” she says—
my nightmares crawl twenty feet behind me.
I listen to her hand’s hammering.
Did she miss or does the thing wear armor?
“I think I got it,” she says.
I focus on the word think &
wonder, Might it draw a next breath,
return to life? No spider messiah,
it wears its guts on the outside now
as though thrown through a vehicle’s window
during a head-on collision.
“Third one today,” she says,
describing an army
as she drops the broken soldier in the bin.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently ‘Escape Envy’. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, ‘Tell Us How to Live,’ is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press. You can find him on Twitter @AceBoggess
