Daniel Bouchard

Daniel Bouchard’s books of poetry include The Filaments (Zasterle) and Some Mountains Removed (Subpress). Recent essays on George Stanley and Rachel Blau DuPlessis have appeared in print and online.

Photo credit: Kate Nugent

Time to Empty the Pool Time to Empty the Pool

The rocks set down in the garden and the red sorrel that finds its way to unfold in sunlight  its candy-shaped blossom and the water that flattens the grass and floods all the bugs in its path  down to the thirsty hostas and the things that fly out from that wrath  on tough little wings that look brittle and the big colored towel of dyed cotton  with giant faces of cartoons and the frayed nylon of fold-up chairs  riveted to hollow aluminum frames and the clouds drifting against blue and the twisting shapes of shade where secretive squirrels and birds  ply their gathering trade and the beds of zucchini and basil  whose leaves droop in the heat and the territorial spiders and the occasional passing motors  over the hot humming road and your soaked lashes and dripping head and your grass- and dirt-covered feet  slipping into flip-flops and the stories we read under the lamp and the insects hitting the window pane.

Sep 24, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Bouchard

Three Poems by Daniel Bouchard Three Poems by Daniel Bouchard

"Onderdunk Road," "The Apartment," "The Fancy Memory" 

Nov 28, 2011 / Daniel Bouchard

Onderdunk Road Onderdunk Road

from the Iroquois Museum came the story   of a sky woman who fell thru the clouds and was caught by geese who set her down   on a turtle’s back. Thus, people came   on Bear Road there were no bears on Schoolhouse Road only a swamp on the state highway freight trucks   roared past us for half a mile and on Red Barn Road somebody had   recently painted a barn red   and there the mud-covered cows charged toward us   and waited for a word at the hot-wired fence   we told them we meant   Helios no offense   weeping willow trees were always close to houses   while lichen-covered, crag-wrinkled trees had faces to be seen, recognized on them   all these barns with roofs sagging like wet paper   tear themselves down by decay   unstitched nails pop from buckled walls   under which the white ash and maple sprout   when we came down from the hill   where fog enshrouded us rushing water in culverts   was loud but invisible

Jun 1, 2011 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Bouchard

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