"WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO FORGET?"

 

by Ace Boggess

                           

                                                           

     Question asked by Joanna Grant

 

Blows to the back of my head; no,

I must remember. The criminal fists

that blacked my eye, or the fist in youth

that bloodied my nose; no,

I must remember those. The knife

to my throat & the other knife

to my throat I need to keep in mind,

same as the blade I held to another’s

in dope-sick frenzy. The humiliation

of being mocked for my clothes,

hair, a slightly-feminine wristwatch,

my inability to do a pushup

in the 7th grade, my arrest at 34,

my face on TV at a court proceeding

or after reading awful poetry to vampires

playing a Halloween dress-up game,

some sexual disfunction, stupid things I said

because addiction gave me a gurgling voice?

How could I let those go? Also,

that I had something like a normal life

with happy moments but not-quite-

happiness—I cling to the alternate

reality. The past is too much a part of me

to release any part of it, &

what I’d want to forget, I already have.

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