I Hate It When

while advising me of your plans,
you say Tuesday, which is tomorrow,
& tomorrow is what you mean.
It sets a hiccup rolling in my brain,
a stutter-step dance, a skipping record
playing jazz to which I don’t listen
but now must pay attention. You tell me,
I’d like to go to Target Tuesday
(Wednesday, Friday, Sunday the same),
or, Tuesday, I’m inviting X & Y for tea.
Tuesday as in tomorrow? I ask, not intending
to correct you, unable to control it.
My head has too many cluttered sock drawers
to sort through. It seeks order in landfills.
Your voice says, Yes, but your eyes
cut shivs like italicized serifed fonts.
I want to apologize right away
as much as I want you to say tomorrow
when tomorrow is what you mean,
tomorrow not a word in your language
except when you quote Macbeth back at me,
full of sound & fury, which I love,
as I wonder, Is this a dagger
which I see before me? & think,
Why yes, I do believe it is.

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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.