Sunday, July 11, 2021

MELT

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 RĂ©sonancee, 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.