The Grape-Nuts of Wrath

From the bed to the window

takes me a good, quiet minute,

from the window to the toilet

takes me a minute or two, everybody shush,

from the toilet to the closet

takes my breath away for a spell,

from the closet back to bed

takes my eloquence très rapide:

no situation is permanent, you said,

each day a different horse on the carousel,

each breakfast something small in a bowl.

I will choose to be as grateful as I can

for having survived the crash;

what’s the purpose in hurling the warm sweet milk 

against a wall that can’t even defend itself?

They say that the Saturday after next 

something special’s in the works for dessert. 

When I poke my straw 

into the lid of my ice water cup

it makes a sound like some kind of 

sing-song gasp of weak praise,

and I raise my hand up to say amen.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, The Rye Whiskey Review and Cultural Weekly, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Pulp Literary Magazine and Eunoia Review. Rich recently served as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for more. He loves his life with his love Leann in the perpetually intriguing Southwest.

Oncology-Whiz

It felt like that morning took all day long,

the ambergris hours you spent in bottom time in the MRI,

the doctors going wreck diving inside your head, your body,

and the waiting room smelled of lumps in the throat 

and targeted therapy, talcum powder and protein bars,

they didn’t let me in the room to watch the procedure;

I took a second look at life’s orchestral score 

to see what I was supposed to be doing with all that concern

and the only notation was fermata, fermata right now

meaning stay, meaning do not move, meaning do not breathe

and while the doctors brandished their dive lights

to see what new world was in the dark inside you

I asked a nurse in the hallway to remind me where the cafeteria was

and I paid for a bagel with cream cheese and orange juice

and I left my change in the take-some, leave-some cup

and I let out a long breath in an atmosphere of new age Muzak,

butter and burnt rubber, I lay adrift among the plastic trays

pondering superluminal visitations of regret and fear,

far from home in theodicy, understanding anew the truth 

that the mass tone of nightmare is worry

and I wondered if you were awake in that machine upstairs

or if you actually got some sleep in there, dreaming in raw kiloyears,

hearing roars of bears, talking with that one shade of blue,

listening to the whispers of an immortal clad in tints of gold and pink,

surfacing only briefly to heed the pronouncements

of cicadas, buzz of determinist bees,

a crash of China cymbals near sentient medical dashboards

acuminates into hoarse pledges of love,

accelerando on the fellfields of prognosis

then came weeping and ambulatory wishes from me to the clouds 

and the doctor said the sight of me in the chapel on my knees 

turned out to be benign, she’s coming around,

the creator speaks in doppler ultrasound:

do you see that I am trying to live,

live in some kind of way by which you can tell

I paid attention to all your bravery.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, The Rye Whiskey Review and Cultural Weekly, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Pulp Literary Magazine and Eunoia Review. Rich recently served as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for more. He loves his life with his love Leann in the perpetually intriguing Southwest.

Hope Like Sunlight

Sunlight rushes in a brand new day, heart lifting

with hope in the knowledge of a day

without appointments, a day to play and create, a day

with no expectations, no decisions, a day to just be.

Slip into the slowness of the hour, sip a coffee and leave the phone

tucked away. Let a breath out and listen, listen to the stillness

of the morning, watch the way the breath

rises and falls, expands and contracts.

My child beside me, wrapped in blankets, still asleep, face pressed

against the pillow, a soft whirring of their breath reaching me.

I light a small lamp and dress quietly, wanting 

to let them rest.

Outside, the day brightens with a promise that meets

my fledgling heart: today will be easier, today will be ours

to make and hold light in.

I stretch my fingers towards the sky, bending left, then right—

fingers open to the window, open to the light.

Behind me my child shifts, blankets rustling.

I turn to see them rising, eyes meeting mine

with the sun, morning written on their face

like the sunlight, bright, shining— hopeful. 

Eyes holding hope

like sunlight, face shining brilliant

as stars. They greet the morning softly, their voice keeping mine

in tenderness, their heart holding mine 

steadily beside them: rising, rising.

Stacie Eirich is a mother of two and author. Her book, Hope Like Sunlight (Bell Asteri Publishing, 2024), is an illustrated memoir in poetry, prose and art of her family’s journey to a cure for their child from brain cancer. All proceeds from the book benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital & Ronald McDonald House. Her poems have recently been published in The Amazine, The Bluebird Word and Synkroniciti Magazine. She lives in Texas with her family. www.stacieeirich.com