Spirit Lift

by Ace Boggess

Twist knob, enhance volume. Percussion vibrates.
            Here come the lead riffs--soulful, jazzy.
The singer, he’s been there, felt what I have.
            Today is an excuse for music, as if I needed one,
as if joy, too, couldn’t entice a song.
            Misery begs grooves for empathy.
 Something from the 1990s.
            Something off-kilter & angry with its dancing feet,
my dancing feet, feet that never learned a two-step
            as they lived it:
​forward, back, forward, back, release.

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Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.