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.