Anniversary
January 6, first year after everyone lost. All flashback, and those who saw same footage last year still ask what happened. Move along derelict dissidents, history’s laziest suicide bombers. masks off, waved like false truce. comicon of wannabe warriors commanders, gallon high hats. Who knows when their day will arrive. They know they’re due, hope the future, the world fought for, has the courtesy to go with them. Waste Quicken heart, beat clock before latest online hoax killing you is forgotten. Stand in line just to shove more bodies out of bed. Your children bedsit beside, read aloud favorite tales of science vanquished. Repeat revival, no one saved. Voice of vociferous, not a single ear out. To the Returning Teachers Hide fading joy hamster packed in your cheeks before pleasure principals scoop rest out. Avoid those sighing parents, victory smug over which of you wanted children less. Throw up sun as sparkling bauble students can steal. Race them outside in circles until none watching knows who escapes from whom. Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, The New Verse News, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate Review. and the anthology Reimagine America from Vagabond Books. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award.
Fevers of the Mind 