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      November 26, 2012Ace BoggessAbsent Dearest,

      I walked among the graves alone
      except for those dead names
      collected in the whisper-basket for my tongue.
      Crossing muddy easements, my face slicked with fine rain
      that brought cologne’s scent like wine & citrus off my skin,
      I knew no one’s Lithia Ledford, wife of Lee;
      no Sherry, Raymond, Eric & Baby Quails;
      not a single Irvin Bell, infant, son of Erma Jean.
      I met them, faded images enshrined in frames:
      Lewis Benson, Elsey Lamar, James Everett Eudy
      the third, the fourth & the fifth.
      Were you there to witness their Civil War memorials,
      their fragile elephants carved like marble teddy bears,
      to count their dates & read their names aloud with me—
      Mrs. Lazano, Hope running, Rev. Ronald Lovinggood
      you would have welcomed love into your breath.
      Distant, your name waited in twilit West Virginia,
      surrounded by graves for rivers, shifting plates
      that have no names we know, their monuments
      extending to the clouds. Still, I praised your name,
      Love, strolling through the cemetery dark.
      It was the voice of reason in my head,
      the voice of remembering
      as though I held your hand & led you
      from that silence, voice absence
      of your name, my name, their whispers.

      from #21 - Summer 2004

      Ace Boggess

      “I describe myself as a literary novelist writing on existential themes. I’ve devoted a decade to working on these books. So, in the true spirit of existentialism, at parties I get introduced as ‘my friend Ace, the poet.’ Still, with a new agent on the case I hope to sell my latest novel, States of Mercy.”