by Ace Boggess
No cable TV. No internet.
No power this morning.
Gas leak, gas leak, gas leak—
how the walls begin to speak
through their O face, holy.
Foundation digs itself deeper
underneath the old garage.
Mold makes a glutton of itself
on pink-flowered wallpaper
bordered by bathroom tiles.
What goes wrong in the house
you live in, the one you
never wanted to own but do?
Door jambs, water heaters, ants
in the sink—the American Dream:
all despairs under a single roof.
Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His fourth poetry collection, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.