GRATITUDE LIST #3
Forgive me when I praise my wealth
of misadventure:
how the knife pressed against me scarred my thumb
& fingers,
never took my throat;
how the knife that pierced my lower back
spared an artery by an inch of fat;
how the knife I wielded like a child’s plastic sword
found an arm & thigh but nothing
to haunt me past this writing-down;
how the knife I threw stuck only in a door;
how the pistol cocked behind me somewhere in shadow
never discharged
while cash & goods were exchanged;
how the larger knife held at my neck
turned out to be a test
by a desperate man who wanted my desperation;
how the officer’s boot grinding my skull
into a blood-soaked pharmacy floor
raised up before a bone could fracture;
how the fists of other prisoners found my face
just enough to land a message;
how I survived the way I lived;
how knowing I survived
somehow doesn’t make me a survivor;
how the knife tonight cut meat—
so dull, I thought, so simple & pleasingly dull.
ABOUT THE POET
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, WV, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.
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