They Wish I Wrote About Flowers By Chad Parenteau

They’d rather

I report on 

backyards,

not protests,

trade politics,

for pollen,

record tinier 

genocides.

Just until

they can

finally say

I’m crazy

when petals

fail to rise one 

sunstroked 

summer,

gaslight me

under blazing

gaslit eye,

all saying

there were

never any

hydrangeas

at my house,

no lilacs 

ever grazed

my mother’s 

old bushes,

dismiss all 

my photos

as deepfakes,

dismiss me,

horticultural

has been 

hoarding 

dandelion wine.

They’ll tell

family, friends,  

cast memories

in plot hole.

You’re wrong

Chad never

ever wrote

about flowers. 

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 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. 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.