My chore: cook breakfast for twenty men.
Supposed to switch jobs after a couple weeks,
I kept mine six months,
enjoyed waking before the others,
stepping outside to smoke
while sitting on a lawn chair in the quiet mostly-
dark of winter & then spring.

I stared at stars more vivid than the sober eye remembered.
One fell like a flare at the end of its arc.
In February chill, I hypnotized myself with ice floes
easing along the Kanawha River.
They soothed as though I were on drugs
again. Back inside, I flipped sixty pancakes,
scrambled a crate of eggs.

My hunger calmed, I could achieve
anything without angst,
my past, or what came next.
That daily hour was one step not among the twelve
on which we bought instruction,
how I came to believe the Serenity Prayer
should end at serenity.

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.