The People That Forgot Time
Godzilla
Planet of the Apes
American International Pictures,
Amicus Productions, 1977
Horseback cavemen in samurai armor.
The executioner’s David Prowse
who that year also embodied Darth Vader.
The island’s alive with its volcanic eye,
phantom hiding a molten heart.
Throw in one sultry native
who barely contains her breasts &
this writes the script for dreams
of a teenage boy—
confusing cluttered inconsequential
hinting at monstrosity—
in a sound sleep from which he wouldn’t wake
until he heard his mother call his name.
Toho Film (Eiga) Co. 1954
Because we built the bomb,
because we used it, this seemed fated:
horror rising from illumined sea,
filling the sky like a mushroom cloud
to tear apart a world rebuilt.
I’ve heard whenever
anywhere on Earth a bomb went off
women of Hiroshima blinked as one
as though a blinding flash
had pierced their walls.
APJAC Productions,
Twentieth Century Fox, 1968
I used to watch every time I’d flip through channels &
catch it on TBS. I couldn’t pass it up,
except the first twenty minutes
I’m not sure I ever knew existed.
In prison, I’d joke I was Taylor (Heston) in his cage,
surrounded by his kind who couldn’t speak his language,
whereas the guards could talk but they were
monkeys dressed in shiny suits.
Simple moral: men are wrong-headed & mean.
We fuck things up & people over.
The next bunch, apes or whatever else evolves,
will try hardest to be like us & not be us.
Ace Boggess is a freelance writer and editor living in Charleston, West Virginia. He spent five years in a West Virginia penitentiary, during which he wrote the poems that became his previous poetry collection, THE PRISONERS (Brick Road, 2014). ULTRA DEEP FIELD is his third book of poetry. His other books include THE BEAUTIFUL GIRL WHOSE WISH WAS NOT FULFILLED (Highwire Press, 2003) and the novel A SONG WITHOUT A MELODY (Hyperborea, 2016). He has worked as a reporter, a customer-service rep for a phone bank, a sales clerk in record store with accompanying head shop and adult room, and security guard. His writing has appeared in HARVARD REVIEW, NOTRE DAME REVIEW, LUMINA, MID-AMERICAN REVIEW, RIVER STYX, RATTLE, NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY, and hundreds of other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.
