Thrifting

Victorian couch you’d love to own

if it fit in my compact car.

Teapots, champagne flutes, & figurines

of swans—your favorites.

I have so many, you tell me,

your house a collector’s paradise.

I’d buy you the store if I could,

settle on a ten-cent book 

about Blue Willow china &

a glass for cordials or aperitifs

so tiny it wouldn’t 

get a field mouse drunk

in the hiccupping 

cartoon story we will draw.

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, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.

Petit Larceny

Quiet as mosquitos in the night,

sneakthieves lifted concrete threshold tiles,

found them to be heavier than they thought,

dropped them a few inches up the hill.

I have been that desperate.

I’ve done my crimes & time, & all the while

not once did I consider stone a get

worth spending even one more hour in jail.

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, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble. His forthcoming books include poetry collections, My Pandemic / Gratitude List from Mōtus Audāx Press and Tell Us How to Live from Fernwood Press, and his first short-story collection, Always One Mistake, from Running Wild Press.

Hypothermic Dream

 I

In the void where shadows whisper,

Where light refracts through fractured faith,

A silent dialogue—dissonant, distant—

Emerges between the echo of a god

And the ghost of a penitent heart.

Did I, in my spirals of doubt,

Unravel the threads of our covenant,

Or was it You, who, in the stillness,

Withdrew the breath of divinity,

Leaving me to suffocate

In the vacuum of Your absence?

Is this chasm a construct of my feeble mind,

Or an abyss You carved in cold indifference?

In my fervor, did I cast You aside,

A shadow burned into memory’s ash,

Or did You, with the precision of eternity,

Erase Yourself from my soul?

Was it my hand that trembled,

As I tore the veil of sacred communion,

Or did You shroud Yourself in the mist,

A distant star collapsing inward,

Swallowed by the gravity of Your own silence?

I wander through the labyrinth of my thoughts,

Tracing the contours of abandonment,

Each step a question, each breath a doubt—

Have I become the architect of my forsaking,

Or are You the silence that dwells

In the void of my unanswered cries?

In this dance of solitude and longing,

I am both the seeker and the lost,

Forever bound to the question that remains—

Have I forsaken You, my God,

Or have You, in Your infinite quiet,

Forsaken me?

II

It was I who first turned away—

A seed of doubt sown in the garden,

A whisper that became a storm.

From Adam’s trembling hand, I took

The fruit of knowing, bitter sweet,

And with each bite, I forged the chain,

A link of sin that binds me still,

Pulling me further from Your grace.

With every transgression, I carved the path,

A winding road of shadowed steps,

Leading me deeper into the night,

Where Your voice grows faint,

And my guilt resounds, endless, loud.

It is not You who has forsaken me,

But I who drift, a soul adrift—

The weight of sin heavy in my chest,

A burden I cannot shed,

For it is the mark of my own making.

In my pride, I built the wall,

Brick by brick of willful acts,

Each one a stone cast in defiance,

Until the chasm yawned wide,

And I stood alone, on the edge of despair.

I am the sinner, truly lost,

Wandering far from Your light—

It was I who severed the bond,

Since that first betrayal,

And with each sin, I grow more distant,

From the mercy I once knew.

  III

And now, in the cavernous abyss of my own making,

Where the echoes of my sins resound,

I stand naked before the truth—

I am not worthy of Your mercy,

For I have woven my existence

From the threads of indulgence and deceit.

I bartered eternity for the fleeting taste of sin,

Each act a blasphemy, a betrayal carved in flesh.

In my hedonistic descent, I forsook You,

Turned my back on the light, craving the shadows,

Where the pleasures of the flesh

Promised escape from the void within.

Yet the void remains, and I am its architect—

A being who chose the abyss over salvation,

Who sought solace in the very darkness I now curse.

I reveled in the hypocrisy of my desires,

Condemned in word what I worshipped in deed,

A human beast, all too eager to abandon the divine

For the filthy comforts of my own corruption.

I am no penitent pilgrim on a path to redemption,

But a hollow vessel, brimming with deceit,

A mask of piety shrouding the rot beneath—

The truth of my nature, hypocritical, vile,

A mockery of the faith I once claimed to hold.

Hell was not merely created for souls like mine,

It is the inevitable consequence of my existence—

A furnace stoked by the very sins I cherish,

Each flame a reflection of the lust I harbored,

The lies I whispered, the betrayals I enacted.

And in that inferno, I will not merely burn,

But be purified in the agony of my own making.

Let the flames consume this wretched husk,

For I am beyond redemption, beyond grace—

A soul who forfeited its place in the light

For the fleeting ecstasies of the forbidden,

A creature unworthy of the mercy

I so arrogantly spurned.

I deserve to be devoured by the fire,

To feel the searing kiss

IV

Though I am poised at the precipice of the inferno,

And my sins mark me for eternal damnation,

I still reach into the abyss for the hope of Your mercy.

This damned world has sculpted me from innocence

Into a creature marred by darkness and despair,

The test was crueler than I ever imagined,

For it is not the world alone but the very essence of my soul

That was twisted and broken by its trials.

Yet, despite the corruption, my true self remains—

A fragment of Your divine essence,

An innocent child, lost in this earthly purgatory.

The sins that plague me are but the scars of a test too harsh,

A testament to the world’s capacity to distort the pure.

In my weakness, I am crushed under the weight of temptation,

A vessel shattered by the very darkness I sought to escape.

I was a child of light, meant for celestial realms,

Yet this damned existence twisted me into a wretched form,

The world’s relentless trials, more than mere tests,

Unveiled the fragility of my being,

Reducing my spirit to a vessel of sin and hypocrisy.

This essence, born of Your divine spark,

Now wanders lost, marred by the very darkness

That was meant to be a mere shadow of its true self.

In the face of my wretchedness,

I am a mere echo of what I was meant to be,

Crushed beneath the weight of my own failings,

A creature caught between the celestial and the infernal.

Before the enormity of my failings, I am but a speck—

A soul yearning for the light of Your forgiveness,

For Your mercy is my last hope against the encroaching void.

I beseech You to see beyond the facade of sin,

To find within me the remnant of the child You created,

The soul destined for Your heavenly grace,

And grant me redemption in the face of my despair.

For in Your infinite mercy, I seek the light

That can heal even the most fractured spirit.

 Mahmoud Maher Eltrawy is a 25-year-old medical doctor from Egypt with a deep passion in various forms of art and philosophy. While his native language is Arabic, he writes primarily in English, as he feels it allows for a more nuanced and authentic self-expression. Writing in his mother tongue brings a sense of vulnerability, which he finds challenging. Under the pseudonym Titoxz, he seeks to share his work with a broader audience.