Poetry by Rich Boucher

​The Future Is Served


I can’t.
 
I can’t handle all the mass shootings 4th-of-July-fireworking
their way all up in the daytime schoolyard skies
all over my country every day, and so I’m going to cope with
the fact that there are 300 hundred mass shootings
in which 300 hundred gun-rack-and-UFC Americans
kill each other every 300 minutes
in the only way I know how:
 
I’m going to eat something weird.

This will be how I get by until I can’t get by.
 
I’m going to eat this light bulb, smothered
in peanut butter and maggots until my lips
and my face and every other part of the mouth of me
looks like a pizza with screaming red Salvador Dali for the toppings;
maybe I won’t survive, but continuing to live
while the news on television and on the internet
keeps on drop-kicking the crotch of my mind
is not an option and cannot be an option.
 
I can’t.
 
I can’t handle that my country tis of thee
now has a president that I can president better than,
and so now I am going to eat this handful of aaa batteries,
now I am going to suck down this shot glass full of fire ants
 
     now I am going to bite into this plastic bag full of donated blood
 
I’m going to bite my way into this can of Libby’s Green Peas
without the aid of a can opener just so I can hear and feel
every single off-white tooth of mine (every sweet child of mine)
crack and snap off
until the silver top of the can
looks like I had the kind of accident
where a lot of blood got out of me
 
I raise my knife and fork
and prepare to dig into this trusting, live puppy
strapped on his back to the fine china plate;
he’s happy and wheezing and small
and I’d rather endure my first bite
and his screams
never looking at his face
staring at the ceiling fan for as long as I have to
than live a moment longer with a sanity that’s been soiled
from constant exposure to Uncle Sham
and all my fellow unamericans
 
oh sexy pee escorts of the Ukraine
and the Russian Moscow
take me home

I’ve got tons of breath mints




Safe Haven


I am standing in the candy and snack aisle
of a 7-Eleven, and trying to decide which gum
will be better for my breath for this trip.
An old man is paying for something at the register,
and because of my mind, I wonder if he is real, or if he is just a metaphor
for all the old men who have escaped their realness
and become metaphors.

1.

2. This is a story about me, about you,
about the moment a decision must be made
no matter how heavy the homework feels,
about how even the smallest of crises (2% milk fat or skim?)
can cast shadows so large (Storage unit bill or Netflix bill?) and from so high up
(top button buttoned? three buttons undone?)
that they loom, these shadows; they LOOM

2. ORGANIZATION IS A METHOD OF THOUGHT CONTROL
2-and-a-half. NOT ALL THOUGHT CONTROL IS BAD.

2. Math is not my strong suit

7,009. What can be done to stop people
from numbering the parts of their poems?

2. There are terrible, terrible secrets in this world,
and they know that they have a safe haven in me
because I can truly sympathize with their position.

6.
6.
6.

9. When my parents were alive, they were only human,
and therefore there were limits to what they could know about me.
Now that they're both in the afterlife, they can see
and know everything about me.

40. It's not selfish to want someone who is dead
to be alive; it's arrogant.

41. Guilty as charged.

15. I am standing in the candy and snack aisle
of a 7-Eleven and trying to decide which gum
will make the least amount of noise at the funeral I'm headed to,
drowning in the undertow vanity of imagining my own depth
 - 144 - see, God, you're not the only one who can multi-task.

7,009. What can be done to stop people
from numbering the parts of their poems?

210. I am standing in the candy and snack aisle
of a 7-Eleven, so full of privilege it hurts,
trying to decide whichgumwhichgumwhichgum WHICH GUM
will be better for my breath for this trip
and there are wings inside of my ribcage,
and I have no agency to set them free,
so I'll keep counting until agency happens.

4. Agency will never happen if behavior never goes rogue.

65. We used to say that when a person was able to do something,
it meant that that person was able to do that thing.

10. Now, we say that they have agency,
because - SEVENTEEN - speaking in code makes us feel like much better spies.

54. Here I am in the candy and snack aisle
of a 7-Eleven, trying to decide which gum
reminds me of my aunt who used to babysit me
when my mom had to work an extra long shift or two.

I keep finding a better time (1) to have been born in; how about you?

7,009. What can be done?

3. Snarking on another person's expression of their pain
is a rotten, misbegotten thing to do
and (1968) I wish I was at a loss for words.

Where was I? - EIGHT - Oh yes,
13, I mean 7, I mean 20

W. It's hard to assign numbers to the millions of thoughts
that makes us bigger on the every inside
than we are on the only one outside.

Y. Because this is a story about me, about you

7,009. and WHAT CAN BE DONE to help those who are afraid
to name the poems of all their hearts?

​

Bio: Rich’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, The Mas Tequila Review, In Between Hangovers, Menacing Hedge, and Cultural Weekly, among others. From the summer of 2016 to the spring of 2017, he served as the Associate Editor and Weekly Poem Curator at Elbow Room Magazine.

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