In What Way Do Things Get to Be Wrong?
—John Ashbery, “Crossroads in the Past”
Can be simple: a theft against hunger,
a lie for love & happiness of the other.
Good for bad. But consider Kant’s flawed imperative:
if everyone did anything,
what a disaster the world would be. Will be? Is?
Today, it’s war. Does it matter whose
when missiles moan like Gregorian monks?
One act cracks a common ethic.
Bombs fall, & tanks roll along,
offering death like armored ice-cream trucks
with sweets that no one wants.
The first stolen fruit & argument & abuse
expand into a land war in Europe,
Asia, the Americas. We say
we never desired this; we craved peace
in our bellies which have grown too big.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy. 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.