by Chad Parenteau
“Heat Check” by Headlines at The Nib, July 8, 2021. |
If the earth
is warming
why is there
still ice?
It’s summer.
Leave affairs
to boil on
picnic table.
Why else our
country a pot
if we’re not
to pour in?
Stand ground,
plant feet
in malleable
tar roads.
Cook skin
to bronze,
be own
memorial.
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. He is a contributor to Headline Poetry & Press and serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His latest collection The Collapsed Bookshelf was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.