Chad Parenteau across four issues
Chad Parenteau is a Boston-area poet, editor, and longtime organizer of Stone Soup Poetry. His books include Patron Emeritus and The Collapsed Bookshelf, and his work has appeared across literary journals, anthologies, performance venues, and online publications.
Four historical issues record his work. Issue 14 preserves “They Say I Should Be Used To It,” Issue 17 records “3 Sarcastic Haiku,” Issue 29 records “Our Metaphors Are Still From Earth,” and Issue 39 preserves “Coming to.”
They Say I Should Be Used To It
My father throws out another pop question:
Name the desired shape of the dream house
I envision for myself and my new girlfriend.
I yell out, “Polyhedron.” Not because
I know the shape, but because a shorter word
will cause him to say I betray my education.
Instead, he tells me it’s out of my price range,
that my imagination needs an on-line budget upkeep.
Still, my thoughts focus on the hole in my chest,
where my father removed my heart
to prove my lack of knowledge on love.
I look to my girlfriend out of one eye
that tries to convey the obvious:
They tore my fucking heart out.
But she is already peering through it
to my mother on the other side.
I pretend to pace nervously as they size each other up
like pets through screen doors.
I turn to try and keep them circling
in an attempt to keep away from the man
with the bat, who finishes these visits
with such regularity, he’s moved beyond metaphor
as he waits for the crowd to disperse
so he can work each knee to the pavement
with his constant refrain: “You’re just afraid of change.”
Our Metaphors Are Still From Earth
Issue 29 records a long space-travel poem in which an asteroid-belt work crew, a newly arrived technician, retinal photographs, glaucoma, Mars, routine labor, and boredom fold into one another. The poem repeatedly tests the distance between cosmic scale and earthly comparison, ending with a worker whose visor conceals his eyes and whose estrangement has become part of the machinery around him.
Coming to
Memphis mothers right
reflex-reach handed wipe sweat
raise kids likewise
for obsolete levers
justify thongs
claiming they complete
perfect white pants
mothers’ hand-downs
finally creaseless.
Oh, Fathers,
where are your thoughts
rubbed by revision
thirty years before
hands above old waist
lines knowing now
a little earth shaking
would have wrought
no new reflections.
Issue 17
Issue 17 records “3 Sarcastic Haiku.” The surviving page preserves the title and authorship while the three texts themselves are absent.
Books and Boston poetry
Poets & Writers documents Parenteau’s books, readings, editorial work, and stewardship of Stone Soup Poetry. Oddball Magazine records Patron Emeritus and The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry continues to appear in current publications and readings.