Chad Parenteau

Pizza parlor
blares country,
covers trail.

Whiskey in hand,
on windowsill,
drunk on lyrics.

Kenny Rogers
croons, owner
glares outside.

Teaches himself
where they watch
back, when to run.

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals including Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, and The Ugly Monster. His newest collections are All’s Well Isn’t You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. He serves as Associate Editor of Oddball Magazine and co-organizer of the Boston Poetry Marathon.

This poem appears in Uprooted: Poems of Resistance, Witness, and Survival (The Chaos Section Poetry Project, Fall 2026). We’re sharing each poem from the collection individually over the coming weeks. You can read the full book or download the free PDF here.