Table of Contents

Ace Boggess

Flotsam

Left to wonder of deeper meanings,
red cells a layer below the visible,
we watch what crosses the river’s skin: 
twelve basketballs, 
a tree the shape of a child’s casket,
whiskey bottles toy boats that pirouette 
away from faster currents,
beaver dams of bramble, twigs
collected like the basket for a prince.
Everything bobs along the bloated Ohio,
full from two weeks’ heavy rain.
The world passes, pauses, spins in place 
while cluttered happenstance 
of life & life’s disrepair in death race 
all around. Then the globe rolls off its axis.
The current forms a chaos nexus, &
we are scavengers for what the chaos claims.

Ace Boggess is author of The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire, 2003) and, as editor, Wild Sweet Notes II, an anthology of West Virginia poetry (Publishers Place, 2004). His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, RATTLE and many other journals.

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