"PLEASE CONTACT US IF YOU NEED HELP USING THIS EQUIPMENT" - Ace Boggess

"PLEASE CONTACT US IF YOU NEED HELP USING THIS EQUIPMENT"

[sign in a university conference room]

Not everyone was meant
to operate a poem like this.
In wrong hands
the lines may skip
across the page,
metaphors feed back
in shrieks,
white noise &
disconnect.

If you haven't
read the instructions
(style manuals,
encyclopaedias of mythology),
stay away,
step back,
please don't touch.
Call a professional.
There's bound to be
one standing by.
Close.
Closer than you know.
Contemplating
Minotaurs &
Shakespeare.



Ace Boggess is author of a novel, Displaced Hours (http://www.gattopublishing.com) and a book of poems, The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, Poetry East and many other journals.


“In the Library of the University of Leyden, from a print dated 1610” is from William Andrew’s “Curiosities of the Church: Studies of Curious Customs, Services and Records.”