Service Call | Haircut | Examined Life
Service Call
Three-month backlog to buy one,
he says. Because of the pandemic,
factories have shut down. No one’s
making pool heaters these days.
When he opens it up, green water
like a straight-piped stream
collapses out of the busted tank,
an algae tide, while I broom
waves toward the floor drain.
Look here, see for yourself
No, I trust him. My ignorance
extends to guts of a machine.
I want everything to work out
for my mother, whose house this is;
it rarely does: water line,
sewer pipe, a/c, gutters, roof,
car, car, car—all breaking,
broken, billable. He says,
I’ll have to see if I can order parts,
which means disaster.
I’m a tour guide
in this hellscape of catastrophes.
I lead technicians to their charges,
lean against a wall & wait,
wondering why anyone
ever called owning a house
the American dream.
Haircut
She enters the salon
with a plan to end
past iterations of herself,
casting aside ten inches
of dye-blonde grown
from earthy roots.
She exits a whole being,
self-contained the first time
in memory, a shape
the sculptor sees inside the marble.
Does she recognize herself,
or is she a method actor
who has forgotten
her appearance
after ages in disguise?
Checking herself
in the mirror,
she can’t decide.
Examined Life
Occasional mornings in prison,
“Singing in the Rain” conjured upon waking, &
I’d slide half-dancing from my cell.
In freedom, too many times I’ve heard no music,
not a pop song from the 80s
or lyrics I wrote for someone I loved
when odds were against us & the house won.
Living surprises, graceful or clumsy,
purple as a bruise from no wound remembered,
red as brake lights followed out of town.
I’ve spent years reading novels
about crimes I committed when I wasn’t me.
I didn’t see their magnificent, ambling sentences—
perhaps I didn’t have my glasses on.
Ace Boggess is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. 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. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.