The Criterion Collection, a poem by Ace Boggess

Give me the unhappy ending

that is poetry; frames

of desolation, shadow.

Give me the lonely drunk

hurt-hiding with hammer-fist.

Give me samurai, sad clown,

sexual liberation in surplus words,

a story about Salvatore Giuliano 

in which he only appears 

facedown on a blood-soaked street.

Give me suspense & silliness,

progressive social commentary

somehow crude through eyes of now.

Give me indiscretion, passion.

Give me awful children

getting their comeuppance

(why are they always French?).

Give me sense & senselessness,

seduction & sad farewell.

Give me beauty & grotesquerie,

all I want though never wanted

until I built a carnival on my shelves.

---

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 and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.