Rich Boucher has published four chapbooks of poetry and for seven years hosted an open reading and slam in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in March of 2008, Rich has performed all over Duke City. A past member of five national poetry slam teams, his poems have appeared in Adobe Walls: An Anthology of New Mexico Poetry, The Rag, Clutching at Straws, Shot Glass Journal, and Mutant Root.

Four Poems (March 20, 2011. Issue 26. The SLAM & FLASH Issue!)

What the Electric Chair is For

He promised her
that no one would be able to stand
between them and their love
without getting cut in half by machine gun fire;
he assured her that if anyone
expressed doubt about their love
he would flay them alive
with a carrot scraper across the leg;
she smiled at him and accepted his powerful love.
He was the Army and she was Playboy
and people who didn't admire them
were racist against happiness.
He told her that if anyone should ever even suggest
that their bond was anything less than what the saints intended
he would tuck out their eyeballs with his bare fingers;
he would force their hands inside of a live bread toaster;
he would grab his keys, gun the engine
and run them over with his Lexus family steamroller.
To this she cooed like a fawn sparrow;
she ooh'd like the gasp of a tittering squeal;
she ahh'd like a moaning scream of whoopee
on the roller coaster of his salvation-engorged member;
like a girl woman child she shined while sitting on a wilderness log in the sun,
and her dress looked like an Italian restaurant table cloth.
He told her that if anyone came near her,
even if they weren't a threat,
even if they just happened to be walking out on the street
doing their own thing, their own errands or whatever;
if they came anywhere near her
he would show he loved her
by pulling the pin on the grenade
and tossing it at them until they were juicy.
Wet red graffiti on the street.
She kissed him on the cheek when he said that
and instantly cooked a sandwich for him;
his biceps flexed throughout his trousers;
he winked at her and she became pregnant
with ten billion freckled and obedient offspring;
her breasts inflated to the size of happy German Volkswagens,
and those who doubted their love
got reduced to rubble by bulldozers
and marched right into the sea of the ocean.
 
Everyone in the world
wants to be like them now.

Ergo Pablum, Excelsis Ubi Domini
(from the Latin, “Speak of war and you will get one”)

Tell me about war,
tell me where your filthy,
malnutritional children
have run away to,
as thrown rocks chased them
across borders it was illegal to have.

If everyone has their price,
then no one is free,
and if no one is free,
then no one rides for free.

Tell me about the American
and Middle Eastern bombs
that rained and will rain
upon your tattered, desperate
shantytown villages.

Tell me about the fruit stand,
still burning, still churning out
toxic, plasticene black smoke
thirty-one days later.

Tell me about running
on a pair of broken legs
that stepped on a battlefield mine,
talk to me all about
carrying your decomposed mother,
a political victim of an improvised car,
all the way to the war-torn hospital.

Democracy is the wingspan
of angelic determination.

Tell me about that afternoon,
the day you saw your son explode
when the backpack bomb
turned into a checkpoint and detonated,
tell me about the Gaza strip,
American’s most dangerous city.

When television audiences
are given vacations, no one wins.

Speak to me of your horror,
your heartbreak, your desperation,
but do not show tears,
do not let your voice quaver;
do not let your lips quiver.

Tell me about these things regular,
without all that hysterical nonsense.

All-Day Passes Cost Two Dollars
 
There is a moment at the bus stop
when my temperature drops,
when I realize there’s a chance
any one of these people in line with me
could be the one who decides that today’s the day
to snap like a bone, to crack like a safe,
to let the battery juice of his brain leak out of his ear buds,
to flip out and open fire on sixteen strangers
and, when it hits me, this moment,
it tastes cool, like a lemon lozenge on my tongue,
the kind of lozenge my aunt used to give me like candy
back in the year of I’m only seven years old
and my aunt, Doris, the one who died ten years ago,
turns to look at me in slow motion from her favorite chair:
I’m not the most well-behaved nephew she has
but she is smiling at me anyway because she loves me
and now I’m not boarding this bus anymore;
these are not quarters and nickels in my palm;
the man stepping into the bus in front of me
no longer reeks of stale cigarette smoke and grease;
I’m no longer scanning ahead of me for a private, empty seat.
I’m remembering my aunt making me a sandwich
with bologna, mustard and caraway seed bread;
I’m remembering crying, because I didn’t like caraway seed bread;
her generous hand is handing me that sandwich again;
in her other hand is a glass of lemonade.
I am on her back porch, looking out towards the lake;
ducks are walking towards me where I’m sitting;
I am afraid of ducks because one of them bit my finger once;
it was my fault; I didn’t listen when I was told a duck could be dangerous
and I went to pet the one duck who was not in a good mood
and my aunt is telling me to eat my lunch
because “don’t you know there’s some other kids
have to live their lives without nice lunches like what I just made for you”
and my heart comes to a complete leap in my throat
and now I am on the bus again, hearing my aunt’s voice
as though she were still alive, sitting next to me on the bus,
she is smirking because there’s still some time left
for her favorite nephew to learn how to behave;
there are tears in my eyes;
her voice hasn’t changed one bit
and I am hoping with everything I’ve got
that nobody opens fire today.

Together in the Garden
 
Pretend that this banana is me;
take your wide-eyed time looking around
and examining the splotchy peel;
it’s okay if you feel a little bashful and shy,
my confused, precious darling;
we all have moments in our lives
when we are afraid to touch what’s grown;
use your shivering fingertips
to explore and feel how smooth
and cool to the touch this fruit is at first;
look at the colour of this banana
and think of all the emotions between us.
 
So yellow and green,
these things we are afraid to say.
 
Then, when at last you think you are ready,
when your curiosity has finally got the best of you;
grab this banana by the stem
and open it to reveal
what’s been inside all this time,
waiting for you, for your teeth
and the anxious, tremulous mouth
around those white teeth of yours,
and the lips you use like a frisky person
to whisper, whistle, and kiss.
 
Look at how the meat of this banana
stands up for you, all on its own
like a vitamin-rich little angel
waiting so long to be in you,
waiting for you to swallow it
and know for the first time
what it means to be filled with goodness,
and health, joie de vivre, potassium,
and beautiful dreams about children.
 
Look at this banana in my hand.
 
You don’t have to be afraid any more.