Alligators snap at feet of witless giants.
Sandhill cranes swoop in, squawking
their staccato poems from the Beat generation.
Coral snakes & cottonmouths
set up kissing booths at fairs.
I’ve seen none of it, though I’ve looked.
My stepmother makes vague excuses
about the end of mating season,
crisp trimmed lawns in a gated community,
chance.
Where are those cranes?
I ask the silent window but see one tee
of a golf course
waiting for tournament women to play through,
those also absent.
I’m satisfied with searching,
sure beasts loiter on another street,
glide by tooth-first in a nearby pond.
Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea, 2016). He is an ex-con, ex-reporter, ex-husband, and exhausted by all the things he isn’t anymore. His poetry has
appeared in Harvard Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
The Cabinet of Heed 