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"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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