A Poem by Jacqueline Boucher

Jacqueline Boucher

Jacqueline Boucher

Jacqueline Boucher is an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University, where she studies spoken word poetry and its ties to social justice and community organization. She currently serves as Spoken Word Editor of Passages North. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Split Lip, The Butter, Enclave, and Paper Nautilus.

Chimera 

I imagine you a scientist, half-cocked and sunk wrist
in electroshock hair. You’ve made a mess of this. Me.
Grime on your jacket, scuff of kitten paw and pen click. 
You are slouched in a papasan chair, afterthought Dorito

between your fingers like cigarette, residue a fingerprint
when you brush your lip. Swap low shoulder for lightning strike, 
maybe. Cigarette chip for entrails, maybe. 
Long table for foot drag, for torch rumble.

Come closer. I want to show you all the ways the revolution
was like a rap battle. When I wind through your ribs 
like a telephone cord, listen as I tap an I love you 
in pulses on a rotary phone. Don’t trouble yourself
with questions about which one means monster;

they have people for that. Ignore cloying scent
and cool touch. Leave your coat on. Shake the dust
on the black of your jeans. You slither toward standing
and make for the door, vivid trenches alive on your thighs.