Chad Parenteau

Priest reads
cliff notes,
from obit.

Lived, worked,
retired, died,
had family.

What else
gets buried
this afternoon?

Not a single
secret passed
over pew.

Soon no one
will recall
anyone here.

Final gift
of holy
anonymity.

Just one
more thread
on bootstrap.

The unsung
of world’s
winning team.

Sweeping
themselves
under rug.

Pass Peter
without ever
showing pass.

Behind gates,
faceless divine
forevermore.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Crossroads, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review, and The Ugly Monster. He has also been published in anthologies such as French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. His newest collections are All’s Well Isn’t You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives and works in Boston.

This poem appeared in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age — Summer 2025, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.