Ace Boggess

Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021.

https://aceboggess.wixsite.com/aceboggess

Hair Metal

We didn’t call it that
until after we put aside
guitars & dreams
of a colorful existence.

A kind of music broke inside us,
silenced by the 90s,
loss of hope of happiness.

We had fun pretending
before Cobain stopped,
before the President
said, “I feel your pain,”

& like him, we wanted to scream
we were still relevant.

Joyful, wasn’t it? Its gospel
didn’t require we care
about anything.