Three Poems
by Ace Boggess
Free Man Dreams of a Heist
What were we stealing, &
why was I left outside
guarding a car the impossible
silver of a spaceship with wheels?
When the cop came, I swore
it wasn’t mine. We talked
about its magnificence, how
it seemed like a beautiful myth:
there & not there, double-parked &
between the lines.
I didn’t get arrested, cuffed,
or end up back in jail.
Next thing, I was left again
to watch over the loot:
a warehouse full of classic
albums, old vinyl. Folks came in,
browsed as if at the record store
where I worked in 1994.
I twitched & stammered,
looked away, felt as if being
picked apart by crabs.
I never saw the mastermind
who must have been me
in my Hyde body, fully self-
aware of whatever crime
I committed for love
of art, music, & the thrill
of getting away with it,
as I did when my alarm went off.
Free Man Watches a Film About a Free Man
Revanche (2008)
The guy’s Austrian, out of jail &
making bad decisions.
Crime, circumstance, misfortune—
these haunt him
the way love’s ghost must hunt,
the way the shadow-hand of death
will flip him off. I’m there
with him, botching a robbery,
blundering into a clueless cop
who shoots first & never asks.
What revenge would I expect
for tragedy brought on
by a flaw in my character
between good nature & desperation?
The free man (free man #2),
rather than murdering,
fathers a child
the officer will call his,
never learning
the songs he sings are shallow.
Free Man with Cigarette
He sits on a stone patio bench
as if carved there, part of it.
The sun browns one side of his face
like a leather patch covering an eye.
An ant crawls onto his arm.
Leave me alone, he says,
meaning the ant but also the past
he thinks of in these pauses
from his day. He breathes fire
in the wrong direction to call himself
a dragon. He exhales
a violent, bloody history he can’t erase.
Half a dozen deer walk by
ten feet away. They don’t fear him.
He’s lost in thought, hypnotized
by the orange dot of his cigarette.
Freedom is a busy prison
he escapes for minutes at a time.
BIO: Ace Boggess is author of seven books of poetry, most recently My Pandemic / Gratitude List (Mōtus Audāx Press, 2025) and Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021) . 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 the poetry collection Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.