by Chad Parenteau
“DONALD TRUMP, UNPROMPTED, TELLS GOP DONORS HE DOESN’T LIKE HAVING WOMEN PEE ON HIM: ‘I’m not into golden showers,’ the former president blurted out to the crowd.” —Vanity Fair, October 15, 2021
First lady of her kind
stares down her man’s
new list of never woulds,
knows that he thinks
someone’s been lady
too long, far enough.
Opportunity fades.
No children are left
to shield his storm.
For now, she waits
by bully’s pulpit
for highest calling.
Standing on bed,
uncaring hands braced
on shatterproof ceiling,
she’ll stand over him,
open gates to nearest
heaven he can claim.
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.
