by Ace Boggess

Been counting them before they’re hatched,
you see— or, before they’re hatcheted.
You’ve said there’s something spiritual

running your hands through the guts,
clinging farmer-like to blood & grit in cold
where warmth once was. The same with hogs,

cattle— feel the animal pulse inside you
when no animal pulse remains inside
the animal. Not like high-school biology,

cutting up the worm, fingering valves
on the bovine heart. Can’t learn this carnal—
or charnel— madness while forced to feel,

but feel it on your own, & learn, & live madly
in a body that privately bleeds for you. —a lover,
a well-aged wine unopened. Even distant,

I share a certain clammy enthusiasm for
space between, space within. But I think
I’d rather listen to rural myths you remake

in clucker-plucking rapture. Instead, I have
the city, tall buildings, a heartless body of my own
to palpate in hands alert to the sensual, to night,

what’s more, & beyond. Not the same, I know,
but my guts are like yours in casual ways—
pulled apart, scattered to the world. 

Ace Boggess (aceboggess@aol.com) of Huntington, WV, received his B.A. from Marshall University and his Juris Doctorate from West Virginia University. His latest chapbook is Desire's Orchestra (TLD: 1998). His poetry has appeared or will appear soon in Notre Dame Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Portland Review, Concho Review, The Baltimore Review, Potomac Review, Cider Press Review, Beacon Street Review, and many other journals.