Alex Jones After Trial At home, he harkens back to nature via back yard, licks non-psychotropic back of frog, wishes he could turn to anything else, opens only third eye he’s ever known, goes from gaze to yellow haze. Revelation comes despite everything that is him. What if human race made up of sleeper agents trained from womb to crib to sofa, joining millions of cells they call families, working for open conspiracy code named Mother Earth, waiting to be called back in. If he’s right, then he is also alone, last free man, apart from entire system. He prepares final request for handlers: keep body above ground, away from One World, unabsorbed, unassimilated, left whole.
—Submitted on 09/20/2022
Chad Parenteau is the author of The Collapsed Bookshelf (CreateSpace, 2020. His poems have appeared in journals Résonance, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, and other journals, as well as in anthologies including Reimagine America (Vagabond Books, 2022) Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series, and serves as associate editor of the Oddball Magazine.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
