Catching Up

We talk for an hour
about how you’ve quit booze again &

I’d have relapsed by now
if I knew any pushers.

You put down the bottle. You cried.
You went to a meeting. Is that enough?

I haven’t been to one in years &
would rather drown

in a swimming pool like Brian Jones.
Nobody’s happy, & I have a hole

in a brand-new sock, summing up a life
in which bliss feels broken.

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