Ace Boggess is the 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. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.
That Loving Feeling
Your hair tickles my face
when you lean against my chest,
nesting in the groove
that has your shape.
I fight the urge to scratch,
don’t wish to disturb you
as if a doe nibbling
at a shrub in my front yard.
I love you most in moments
lines of your body & mine
have blurred as if smudged
by sweaty, careless thumbs.
I’ve caulked my shirt;
you’ve greased your cheek.
My hand has begun to fall asleep.
What does it dream,
I wonder, as it drifts
above your shoulder.
A fiery passion, I imagine,
for the urge to stretch
toward the itch that smoulders
like an ember on my chin.