Saying Love | Ace Boggess
When a man said he loved me,
was it because of my words?
It must have been.
I hadn’t met him
or felt an inclination to go to him
across gray bends of nothing,
through spidery forests of nothing,
past the waste-disposal mounds
of nothing-anymore,
where road signs promised
exotic dancers & Jesus Saves
nothing. Love: a throwaway word
from a great Russian novel
about death or a teen’s poem
buried in sand & forgotten.
Why love? He could’ve said,
I admire your resourcefulness,
or, I’m ecstatic from your post-
romantic verse, or maybe, Tell me,
just this once, about your flaws.
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025), and the short-story collection Always One Mistake (Running Wild Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble.