"Why Can't I Die in My Dreams?" by Ace Boggess

[question asked by Christine Sostarich]

I can’t escape

zombies three nights a week:

ripped skin & sinew like a butcher’s scraps.

They chase me through chain stores,

down cubicle rows

at the phone bank,

across beaches I’ve yet to see.

I duck under tables, behind a cactus

sprouting from the highway,

as I yell to everyone,

Get down! Get down! like a funk singer.

Not afraid, the inner I comprehends

lacking me

the story ends. I don’t want that.

Even with monsters, I’m happier in fiction,

hanging out

with cliffhangers &

uneasiness.

---

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.

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