Mountain Stage, 11/7/21

No word for what she does
to the guitar across her lap.

She says percussion.
It’s more than that,

fingers in aerobic tango
across frets, palm & fist

slapping, punching, punishing
like angry make-up sex

while offering
soothing instruction

like a 4th-grade teacher
who cares about each

student, though
her patience is transient. 

I want to say she plays it—
not plays as with an instrument,

more like the gleeful occasion 
of a videogame she’s won.

Her hands draw notes
as if solving an equation 

for X, the square root
of unknowing, the time

two trains will meet
when one leaves New York

at 4:49, & the other
waits in San Francisco 

while the conductor day-
dreams miles in a lonely life.

Ace Boggess is the 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 and tries to stay out of trouble. His seventh collection, Tell Us How to Live, is forthcoming in 2024 from Fernwood Press.