—survey for ex-cons

I’ve been called atheist, Satanist, & fundamentalist.
How mysterious.
I’m an unreliable narrator. Trust me.
I’m bones found among ashes of the crash:
true in DNA, yet unidentifiable.
I know you meant something else;
I answer not where my sympathies wander,
but yours, when you squint,
staring at me from across your desk
or reading my name in pages of a book.
Follow my progress if you like. It won’t bore.
Trust me. Trust. Or don’t. I lie awake
considering how to laugh in a life of hurt.

---

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.