DON’T KID YOURSELF

by Steven Kent

"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.

THE TYGER AND THE LAMB . . . AGAIN

by Earl J Wilcox

She said: we forgive you.
He was mute.

She said: hate will not win.
He looked straight ahead.

She said: repent and find your savior.
He said” Yes, sir, to the judge.

They said: Every fiber of our being hurts.
He turned and walked out.

Today there is no balm in Gilead.


Earl J Wilcox lives in South Carolina, cooks, writes, watches baseball, contributes regularly to The New Verse News.