Issue #29.2 A Triple Issue Ace Boggess, Ron Riekki, Nicholas Pagano
A Poem by Ace Boggess
Some Days I Want Nothing More
I exist in nothingness of the moment, computer on my lap, letting it play any of five thousand songs at random, five thousand moods from rage to lust, the universe boiled down to code deciding what I experience next. There’s a lot going on outside: wars, business deals, & surgeries. I choose none of it for as long as the space of an afternoon can hold. I used to do drugs to teach my body calm. Before that, there was music, & in the future, music. What about the absence of people? you ask. When needed, that can be a sort of poetry.
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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, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.
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A Poem by Ron Riekki
During Desert Storm, I remember seeing these officers running
with blowup dolls. It was after midnight. I had insomnia. We were doing bombings every hour-and-a-half. And these officers in dress white uniforms howling and running with blowup dolls the color of fright and they disappeared towards the shore and everywhere was towards the shore because it was a small island hidden in the middle of somewhere and I thought of what it’s like when the responsible ones are irresponsible when the women are vinyllatexsilicone and the men are wolveswolveswolves and the hooting faded, Doppler, and I would work a thirteen-hour shift tomorrow, because every shift was unlucky, and we were children, us, teens, and only two of us would commit suicide, only two, just two, and their deaths would not count in the death toll for the war. But I remember the woman’s face, a CPR-agonal-gasping face, her stiff oxygen-pumped-full body supine and, yes, her eyes begging the fullest moon and I was up above hovering on the barracks balcony looking down and they didn’t see me but she did
and she was terrified
and so was I.
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Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to Portishead's "Glory Box."
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A Poem by Nicholas Pagano
Plot
The yard had no fence, because it had no need.
A family of deer passed daily against the tree line. I picked
what I hoped to save before the next freeze
—Wild Rose, Impatiens, Cape Marguerite Daisies
the color of a bruise—blue vestibule before something
like finality. There were no vases that weren’t cracked along the rim;
designs in the glass, like starshine. The difference between being
trapped and held was an essential condition, something that couldn’t be
bargained for, or made to drink the water you place it in.
Knowing this almost makes it enough. The sun receded
into tenderness, a sky like steel. A line of petals cut the table where they fell.
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Nicholas Pagano has previously been published in Lucky Jefferson, Mid-Atlantic Review, Stone Circle Review, Chronogram, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in New York.
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