Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash
[question asked by Savannah Dudley]
Lived on candy bars & chips,
feasted on cigarettes
rolled in waxy tissue wrapper.
Swallowed a thousand hard-
boiled eggs, pushed aside
the artificial meats.
Ramen noodles were like a college treat:
soup, salt, & seasoning for cheap.
The commissary
took out a lien on my skin.
Calories settled at my waist
where I relaxed a book of the day:
savory words,
not the Word—a heavy meal.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press), Ultra Deep Field, and The Prisoners, plus the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing appears in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Bellingham Review, Notre Dame Review, and other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts, received the Robert Bausch Fiction Award, and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.