The Trouble With Freedom
/Ace Boggess
Chat with an ex-con friend online.
She’s struggling with life outside:
a mother who argues, threatens,
cajoles; seeing her kids;
talking to lawyers; working a job;
avoiding a chest of drawers
in front of the opium door.
She tries to keep her sobriety
from hooking up with madness on the sly.
I tell her, It’ll get better, & it will,
or it won’t. Existing has its cycles
of corruption, joy, disfigurement, relief.
I offer her three words & a pair of ears,
or eyes that read the sounds of her distress
because prison never stops calling,
saying, I’m sorry for the last time,
baby. Being out’s as hard as being in,
but with more opportunity.
I tell her, It’ll get better,
when what I want to say is, Sometimes,
we pause in a paradise of sweets;
others, we drop our ice cream
on the sidewalk, & catch a charge
for indecency.
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 latest collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.
