Forgive me when I praise my wealth

of awkward grievances:

difficult to get pain pills

because people like me did too many &

did too much evil to do them;

a struggle to find tablets for my sinuses

because other people not like me

cook the guts into meth;

why rehab if I still went to prison

after, sober? Wouldn’t one

suffering cancel out the other?

Praise the drug-befuddled past &

laws ignorant men have passed to erase it, &

in erasing, built of it a monument.

Praise those ignorant men (& women),

their shock-&-awe campaign ads

turning an evening of watching TV

into walking through a warzone

with no shoes. I love that I hate them,

hate how the former president’s voice

infects those commercials (on both sides),

as though I’ve stepped on a landmine

that doesn’t explode.

I could continue praising my contempt

all day: the judge that sentenced me,

the prosecutor who lied in hypotheticals,

my victim (though I deserved his wrath),

my ex & family placing blame,

friends who mention my name

in either reverence or whispers.

Or what about roadwork, inflation,

a battlefield overseas? What about

my body breaking down

while I try to wake it up to passion?

Many things to complain about.

Praise them, & praise the hours

of rage & racing heartbeat

which precede a perfect calm

as though a thunderstorm has passed,

when I’m free to go out in the gray &

stare at pink, radiating petals

blazing beautiful pyres on the lawn.

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. 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.