ISSUE 1
Ace Boggess
THE NEW SACRED
We watched Mad Max
Beyond Thunderdome
because you hadn’t seen it.
Tina Turner in her post-
apocalyptic sword-&-
sorcery getup, Mel Gibson
before anyone knew
what he really thought,
all those pigs, those
feral children plagued
with onset of religion.
A lark, a fancy passing
a couple hours in the dark.
Wasn’t it exciting
going back in time
to see the future clearly?
That 80s symbolism
on how everything is
meaningless, which lets us
define it on the journey
like Max in his wasteland,
fit to survive, centering
a great & serious belief.
Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.