Rich Boucher- Three Poems

The McDonald's In Roswell Is Shaped Like A UFO

It was our fourth anniversary and I'd never been to Roswell,

a three-hour drive at night from the dark into the darker dark

while we listened to Pandora until there was no more Pandora,

as the black-and-white miles underneath our tires unspooled 

like a rough-to-the-touch filmstrip of the night

and then we listened to the radio until the only thing left on the radio was talk,

and then we listened to talk radio until everyone on the radio started whispering

as the map of the stars above us rotated and swirled in slow motion

and then we rolled down the windows and listened to whatever lived 

beyond the fences on the sides of the highway

and the mountains on either side of our anniversary loomed

and then slingshot past us, galloping black shadows, 

broad shoulders of the evening slinking away

and then when we got into Roswell; nothing about the town seemed special at all

and the town seemed fake, looked Hollywood, felt hollow

despite the charm of the schwa streetlamps in front of City Hall;

we'd saved up a hundred bucks for all the touristy allure of the town

and so had little to spend on an actual bite to eat,

but we had to eat partly because of our hunger and partly because of our Americaness;

that's when we pulled into the McDonald's off the main drag and we saw the thing;

the place was shaped, incredibly, unbelievably, like a UFO.

It's been a few years now since that sweet anniversary,

but my memories of that trip are still sharp enough to cut through paper,

and I remember it so well, that feeling I had on that strange starry night,

like the body's memory of a drop of summer rain cold on naked skin:

maybe it was because of what we were doing and where we were;

maybe it was because of the fatigue of so long behind a moonlit wheel;

maybe it was the excitement of being underneath whole new constellations with my love

but I could have sworn there was something suspicious about the taste of those McNuggets.

Star-Crossed

All of the stars in tonight's sky 

fall into an hourglass 

with the top taken off,

which before my eyes turns into

a wine glass with a long stem,

which before my eyes 

feels heavy in my hand;

all of the stars in tonight's sky

in that wine glass in my hand

glow in the dark like a bright wine

which I bring to my lips 

and taste every time we kiss,

and I wonder if you are from this world 

or from someplace else entirely.

How Were You Raised?

I don't mind if you're out there,

chittering in the tall corn at night;

I don't mind if you hide in the shadows

of our development; leaping behind toolsheds

with brainwashed heads in your backpack;

listen, I don't care if you're abducting

wild people and executive dogs in the quiet

of my neighborhood's starlit 2 AM;

I don't care where you're crawling;

I don't need to know what you're clambering under

and you can probe as many specimens

as you can find in my humble little town;

all I care about is my privacy, so please

stop looking into my bathroom window

when I'm taking my shower at night;

were you never taught manners

when you were young?

Bio:

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has published four chapbooks of poetry and once hosted a poetry slam series in Newark, Delaware. Since moving to Albuquerque in 2008, Rich has performed all over the Duke City, served two terms as a member of the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program’s Selection Committee, and is currently a member of the 2014 Albuquerque City Slam Team. His poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, The Broadkill Review, Menacing Hedge and The Legendary, among others, and he has work forthcoming in the Write Bloody Publishing anthology MultiVerse, due out in the fall of 2014.