"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity."
—W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"
“I thought I was writing fiction in The Handmaid’s Tale.”
—Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic, May 13, 2022
"It cannot happen here," we claim;
"Our country couldn't be that bad!"
But we may live to find the fame
M. Atwood found in Gilead.
Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer, musician, and Oxford comma enthusiast Kent Burnside. His work appears in Light, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, and OEDILF, among others.