Police Sirens Still Make Me Shiver

from distance late at night across the river
where bars are full with old junkies
shaking hands beneath a table

on one-way streets where cars
pull up to the curb & honk their horns

in parking lots of closed-down grocers
blacked-out pharmacies & boarded-over clubs

in passing or wherever I stand
I hear spontaneous shrillness & tremble
as if noticing a spider on the bedroom ceiling:

I know their curses belong to someone else
still that noisy bleat will mock
as if the past waits holding a blade

as if my arrest is imminent
although I am innocent this once

Listen to the author read “Police Sirens Still Make me Shiver”:

Provenance:  Submission.

Ace Boggess is author of the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016) and two books of poetry, most recently, The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014). Forthcoming is a third poetry collection: Ultra-Deep Field (Brick Road). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

“A Man in the Foggy Night” by George Gorgo is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.