It’s when I see the Tide detergent logo and I’m in the supermarket variety store and I’m in my mind I think about how the world is going to begin to end, the bright flash in the sky. And I know the world will end in a ball of fire that will look a LOT like kind of like exactly like the Tide detergent logo. I walk past the frozen foods, beyond the floral department, through the school supplies aisle and I float float float towards the cleaners and detergents. Where they live. Where they can be bought. And I behold the very small, very tiny and scarce millions and millions of different boxes of detergent powders, powerful in their amber and cadmium cardboard boxes, which shiver on shelves made of metal in rows that are parallel, even, and level even. And I see the Tide. I see the Tide logo, and the Tide detergent logo throbs with the heat of its color right in front of me, the clever design of the logo works most effectively on me, and I suddenly feel the weight of the realization that the world would be a much cleaner place if we were all gone. 

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich is proud to have served two terms as a member of the Albuquerque Poet Laureate Program’s Selection Committee, and also as a member of the 2008 & 2014 Albuquerque City Poetry Slam Teams. Rich’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Yellow Chair Review, The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, The Mas Tequila Review, In Between Hangovers, Menacing Hedge, Lotus-eater, Anti-Heroin Chic, Cultural Weekly and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Soft Cartel, Street Poet Review and in the “Walls” edition of the Poets Speak Anthology, produced by Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. He served for a year as the Associate Editor at Elbow Room Magazine: elbowroomnm.com. Currently living for hiking and the word with his love Leann.