THE ANTI-CHRIST

by Gordon Gilbert

 

 

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Finally the devil gets his due
Not that we didn’t hear him say
He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue
And MAGA folks would love him anyway
 
Pardons for those found guilty of insurrection
Granting more tax breaks to the richest in our nation
Chaos abroad, rising prices and corruption
A war of choice, suffering, death and destruction
His TACO cowardice whenever others called his bluff
His bombastic ranting, hate and lies were not enough
 
He’s broken all his campaign promises
But this time he’s gone too far for the far right
At last they see the devil for what he is
And even MTG has seen the light
 
Once they may have thought he’d be their savior
But this devil never was nailed to a cross
Pure evil can be seen in his behavior
And now his followers are at a loss
 
They never will forgive him for this sin
His claim to be godlike has done him in 


Gordon Gilbert is a New York City west villager. In these trying times, he finds some solace taking long walks along the Hudson River. He keeps hoping things will turn around, waiting on that elusive inflection point. Maybe this is it. 

WHILE THE ELK WERE MOVING

by Nick Allison

To my right,
Longs Peak rises jagged through pine.
To my left,
a wide meadow scattered with boulders—
bones from the old world.
Below, a stream elegies the slope,
snowmelt running fast over stone
worn smooth by thaw and thunder.
This morning, an elk herd passed through—
massive, deliberate,
moving with the grace of dancers,
as if gravity had chosen to spare them.
Not silence,
but the absence of familiar noise.
No voices. No engines.
No signal or screen.
Just the wind-clipped scratch of pen on paper,
and a stillness with weight—
the kind that settles like mist on skin,
that hushes thought.
In the fragile solitude of mountains,
one can almost forget how the edges burn.
Tomorrow I’ll hike back down, return—
to towers, to headlines,
to see what’s become of things—
to see if the center held,
or if, while the elk were moving,
the scaffolding finally collapsed.
He deployed Marines to American streets—
maybe that was the tilt.
Maybe not.
Days fold behind each other
like stage sets in the dark.
Blanket pardons.
Raids without warrants.
Agents at schools,
asking children for names.
Reporters cuffed.
A free press recast as enemy of the people.
The Justice Department, a private shield.
Federal hands bending toward one voice—
like sunflowers to heat.
He speaks of a third term
the way we speak of death:
a joke, until it isn’t.
Warnings come,
dressed in neutral tones:
constitutional crisis,
erosion of norms,
precedent dissolved.
But warnings read like museum plaques
once fire has claimed the foundation.
At some point, it stops being if—
and the only question left
is whether we’re still watching,
or simply learning to live inside the collapse.

Nick Allison is a former Army infantryman, college dropout, and writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in The Shore, Eunoia Review, HuffPost, The Chaos Section, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. He recently curated and edited the free-to-read poetry anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age. “While the Elk Were Moving” is adapted from the introduction to that collection. More of his work can be found at TheTruthAboutTigers.com and @nickallison80.bsky.social.

MORNING IN THE APARTMENT, MARCH 2025

by William Aarnes

After Jane Kenyon’s “Afternoon in the House”

This morning’s news has been nothing

but reports of mean-spirited wrong

after misguided wrong—pardons, tariffs,

layoffs, threatened arrests, betrayals.

There’s no hope of a quiet day.

.

We know, though, how the world works—

our dog, who once had a whole backyard

to herself, worriedly snuggles   

next to me on my reading chair.

More carefree, our Christmas cactus

seems healthy, blooming again in March,

every cladode ending in a blossom or bud.

The moving company had refused

to assume responsibility

for keeping the cactus alive on the haul

from South Carolina to Manhattan.

It was at least as old as our daughter

and way older than our dog,

so we couldn’t desert it.

We paid a graduate student

who was driving to a conference in Boston

to deliver it at the curb.

In its pot the plant is so heavy

we’d bought a special tote to lug it

through the lobby to the elevator.

It now sits in its west-facing window,

happy, a show-off content with its home.

We don’t know what it thinks of the news

but it won’t object to hearing a poem.

Nor will the dog, though for her there’s a better pick

than Roethke’s “The Meadow Mouse.”

So I’ll choose something by Kenyon,

good as this morning’s sunlight,

comforting as memories of a fenced-in yard,    

healthy as the hope of enduring

whatever else is going to go wrong,

a bud of a poem flourishing out loud—

a poem about settling in,

though we worry we should move again.

William Aarnes lives in Manhattan.

FINE PRINT

by Tricia Knoll

Corporations make it so small you don’t

    read a word of it as if they save paper

    by cramming everything together 

what privacy you give up

hidden costs

contraindications, side effects –

one decreases cognitive abilities

on a drug doctors said I needed

as I age. Getting old

brings out glasses,

prescription or straight 

from the pharmacy rack. 

Woe: when it isn’t 8-point 

type, when it’s spelled out big

with a flaunty signature 

of a President who hates they, them

pronouns, turns the tables on being born

on safe soil, pardons killers, changes

the name of the highest mountain 

on the continent—the Great One. 

And on and on, writ large.  

Might as well be billboards

his words that make

my heart ache—what irony

I can’t even read his floozy signature. 

 

Tricia Knoll is an aging Vermont poet and feminist who hasn't yet conquered the heartache for women of losing the write to choose health care in so many states. She has nine collections in print, both full-length books and chapbooks. She is a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. She wonders how liberal folks will move forward in the coming years. 

GENESIS 2025

by Michael Dorian

Source: Seattle Times

In the beginning

He pardoned all the seditionists.

Now the nation was barren and shapeless,

darkness was upon the land

and He said, “Let there be lies,”

and there were lies.

He saw the lies were good

and He separated the lies from the truth.

He called the lies “truth”

and He called the truth “lies.”

And there was evening 

and there was morning—

the first day

And He said, "Let me stop the wildfires

scorching the pretty landscaping

and those expensive houses. 

I know some people in L.A., some 

very wealthy, well-connected people."

And He released with almighty force

from his gullet a torrent of water pressure

the likes of which no man had beheld.

And the fires stopped burning.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the second day

And He said, "Let the illegal immigrants

in the land be returned whence they came."

So with a gust of His great breath

He swept them all up in a glorious gale

and blew back to homelands the vermin, 

scattered like so much feed.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the third day.

And He said, "Let me build a big beautiful wall

And He saw it was a good wall,

a great wall, better than China’s,

The Greatest Wall Of All Time

that anyone has ever seen anywhere

on Earth or any planet in our 

Solar System or even in all of Space,"

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fourth day.

And He said, "Let me stop the war in Ukraine."

And a great swathe of his carefully—

coiffed hair sent all the soldiers

toppling like toys back into their

respective sovereign countries

(with Russia gaining great areas

of formerly Ukrainian land)

and the bloodshed ceased 

like the last lilting notes 

of cherubs’ trumpeted fanfare.

And He saw this was good

(for Putin and Himself, anyway)

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the fifth day.

And He said, "Let me drill, baby, drill!"

So with tremendous huffing and puffing

He had an angel, a female one, fluff

His manhood until it stood,

a tower of steel shining in the sun,

and He poked it in and pulled it out

with enduring virility

until he had poked 

many a holy hole 

deep into the Earth’s womb

and into 625 million acres

of preserved coastal seawaters

and the nation became richer with crude.

And the land and great numbers

of its people were crude.

And He saw this was good

and there was evening 

and there was morning—

the sixth day.

And on the 7th day

He played golf and he cheated.

Once upon a time, Michael Dorian had a collection of poems and a play in one act published by Silk City Press entitled "The Nektonic Facteur.”  He likes to think that when the going gets tough, the tough write poems. 

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

by Bonnie Naradzay

Detail of cover of book by Bearded Doctor.

after Ilya Kaminsky

we lived happily, forgive us, 

we survived, even thrived, 

the way we slunk into the mud

beside the walkways, gave in, 

turned our eyes away, gestured 

with gratitude, wore masks, 

our eyeglasses clouding over, 

vision blurred, happily seeing

hypocrites roll up their sleeves, 

watch them all jump the lines, 

pull rank, Pence with his naked 

flabby arm, bravely showing 

how it’s done, we stood aside,

read about the one pardoned 

for ordering her police dog

to savage a homeless man 

backed against the wall,

showing how it’s done, 

war criminals pardoned,

mercenaries, paid with 

our taxes, gunning down

children with impunity, 

the nakedness of our nation,

we bowed in obeisance, 

sidled by, raised our hands,

excused ourselves, waved 

a note from the teacher,

we lived happily (forgive us)

                     the long year, is it over yet?  

     

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.   

PARDON ME

by Michel Steven Krug

Mike Luckovich / Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We cross a bridge of shadows

when perjury is presumed forgiven

by a nation fighting for its lives,

this faintly boastful oligarch

who asked us to spritz Lysol like Binaca

to kill unwary opponents on contact.

 

He urges his confederates:

scatter the statistics, turn the numerals

Roman, so the national news reports the

toll like snowflakes in Viet Nam.

Say: the fraud is in the mail, in the

machines, then the rule of loyalty prevails.

 

The oval office birthed an infection

the careless insistence like shells on furlough

Flynn no longer in jeopardy.

He’s given a mask to take wherever it’s needed

the plague of Turkey behind him,

a reserved suite in Fort Mar-A Lago awaits.

 

Coerced truth is just a ploy,

Another plea for alchemy answered,

sent at the highest twitch:

the pardon has come, Papadopoulos,

the pardon is coming, Manafort,

resonance for an imperfect union.

 

We live in an era of broken pleas and oaths.

We cross a bridge of shadows tonight

While others debate a return to openness.

Who waits on the other side,

Reveals the bobbing

of a constitution on the margin.

 

Michel Steven Krug is a Minneapolis poet, fiction writer, former print journalist and Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars graduate. He’s Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News (PRTN) literary magazine. He also litigates. His poems have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Eclectica, Writers Resist, Sheepshead, Mizmor Anthology, 2019, PRTN, Ginosko, Door Is A Jar, Raven's Perch, Poetry24, Main Street Rag, the Brooklyn Review, and others. 

SCREWGED

by Shelly Blankman

‘Tis the night before Christmas

and all through the House,

where the reps were so hopeful,

the Senate’s a louse.

T***p kills funds to feed families

as long food lines grow. 

Our incomes are shriveling

while his own funds flow.

The White House is lit 

with bright colors galore 

while suffering lingers

among the Black, Brown, and poor.

Small businesses are dying

while T***p continues to tweet

months after numbers 

clearly show his defeat. 

Not one single tweet 

about the sick and the dead

Medics, now heroes.

Hospitals now out of beds.

He pardons the thugs,

the rich white and male,

because white lives matter

while Blacks linger in jail.

He’s neglected the needs

he was sworn to protect.

In the end those he cared about

were extremely select. 

So Merry Christmas to all,

And to all a good night.

May next year be better

with T***p out of sight!

Shelly Blankman lives in Columbia, Maryland. She is author of Pumpkinhead, a collection of her poetry, printed for her as a surprise by her two sons, Richard and Joshua, currently quarantined in New York and Texas, respectively. Shelly's poetry has been published in a number of journals, including First Literary Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Verse-Virtual.