Prayer
When I lean toward nowhere,
Lord, if I live long enough
to see it coming, let me not
regret the failures of my body.
Let me recall the worst of times
as gateways to evolving
my awareness of self, others,
loves, biases: scored music
in the unconscious
like engine rattle
while the car keeps running.
Let me call my awfulness
lovely—ruined marriage,
crimes for which I’ve
forgone remorse. Let me
applaud my madness—
I was, in loneliness, lost,
a blind cat navigating alleys
for scraps, sex, & directions.
Lord, let me praise
the pantomime of existence.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.