HER CENTENNIAL

by Courtney Hitson

For Flannery O’Connor,  born March 25, 2025

 

You watch from inside my poems, 
especially the ones that try
to dislodge a light beyond the page. You,
so schooled in charming goodness
from a garden snake.
 
Your hands clench these serifs
and spectate another freakshow
of a decade: our three-headed
trillionaire, realities prone
to the warp of beeping boxes,
and a bankrupt, orange business
man leading the way.
 
We’ve grown much too big
for these britches, but storms
this epic? They call for shrunken inseams
and egos. I still wish
that sixty-one years’ worth of spiral
staircase didn’t divide us.
I know you’d hurl God
as if a grenade, hot and hungry
for freedom from your hands. 

Courtney Hitson teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. As of March, 2025, she has work forthcoming in Kestrel Review, Eunoia, Qu, Sequestrum, and Eastern Iowa Review. In 2024, her poetry received three Pushcart nominations. Outside of writing, she enjoys scuba-diving, freestyle unicycling, and philosophy. Courtney and her husband, Tom (also a poet), reside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with their two cats.

THE CON MAN AND THE DEVIL

by Scott Talbot Evans

Graphic via Red Bubble

There once was a con man of ill-gotten wealth.

Many counterfeit trophies cluttered his shelf.

He prided himself on his great mental health,

And made known to the world he’d done well for himself.

 

He built monuments, palaces, and towers so high,

That they threatened to poke God Himself in the eye.

The man was so crooked, unscrupulous, and sly,

That Satan decided to give him a try.

 

“Nice to meet you. I’m the Prince of Perdition.

I can see you’re a man of blinding ambition.

If it’s not too much of an imposition,

I offer a once in a life proposition.”

 

“What are you bothering a busy man for?

Can’t you see I have houses and women galore?

What could you possibly add to my score?”

The devil grinned widely and simply said, “More.”

 

“You will boast and brag. Your horn will be tooted.

The masses will fall for you as if struck by Cupid.

They won’t even notice their pockets you looted.

They will believe every word you say, no matter how stupid.”

 

“You will split the world in chaotic division.

Your critics will charge you with crimes and derision,

But my lawyers will twist every fact and decision,

So you won’t spend a single minute in prison.”

 

“I need more. I want banners to herald my name,

In bold proclamation of my unequaled fame.

The public must shower me with so much acclaim,

That it puts Alexander and Caesar to shame.”

 

“You drive a hard bargain. I find you quite droll.

In return for all that, you must pay a small toll,

A possession you won’t even miss on the whole,

A little thing commonly known as your soul.”

 

“Is that all?” The cheater started to squeal.

His eager excitement he tried to conceal.

“Looks like I found myself quite a steal.

Okay, buddy, you’ve got yourself a deal!”

 

They smiled and squinted. Their slimy hands shook.

Lucifer wrote the fool’s name in his book.

And that little scribble was all that it took,

For somewhere in hell an ember started to cook.

 

The man’s fame suddenly started to rise.

Half the world believed all his terrible lies.

His power and ego increased to king-size.

He was hailed as a savior in his followers’ eyes.

 

He invented false dangers to control people’s fears

And inflamed their angers to arouse their cheers.

His empire grew on prejudice and smears,

And contempt from his critics was music to his ears.

 

He hobnobbed with hoodlums, gangsters, and whores.

Tyrants and despots were his secret mentors.

He suppressed opposition with threatening roars,

And brought discord and riots to once peaceful shores.

 

He had unholy power to swindle and cheat.

Honesty and integrity took a back seat.

In no time he rose to the world’s highest seat.

But he could not rest ‘til his gluttony was complete.

 

Every ruler and judge was under his heel.

At his feet, the world’s nations were obligated to kneel.

All the lands and possessions were marked with his seal.

And then he sighed, because there was nothing left to steal.

 

He heard a crack, and there was a puff of smoke.

The demon stood before him in a long flowing cloak.

From the heart of darkness a raspy voice spoke.

“The dream is over. Time for you to get woke.”

 

Beelzebub grinned like a fiend and he said,

“The clock has run out, now. Guess what. You are dead.

Forget all the dreams in your silly head.

Fall to your knees and fill yourself with dread.”

  

“I have kept my bargain to the final dot.

The whole world and everything in it is what you got.

You had your fill, and that is saying a lot.

And now I shall take what is mine on this very spot.”

 

The snake’s eyes glowed and he sounded a gong.

A choir of demons sang a tormented song,

But the whole thing went on for a little too long.

“What is happening here? Something is wrong.”

 

The serpent looked for the man’s pain to begin.

But there wasn’t any, to his great chagrin.

From the corpse’s eyes arose a sparkle from within,

And his wrinkled lips curled into a wicked grin.

 

“I told you I was the best dealmaker bar none.

You shoulda read the fine print when you first begun.

I agreed to give you my soul when all was done,

But the joke’s on you, Satan, because I never had one.”

 

The cheat convulsed with laughter to the point of tears.

The joyful sound burned like acid on the devil’s ears.

“This is the first time I’ve been swindled in all my years.

He bowed. “From one con artist to another, cheers!”

Scott Talbot Evans' poems are published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Samjoko Magazine, and Straight On Till Morning. He was twice a finalist in The New Yorker caption contest and won the GEVA Theater 2 Pages/2 Voices competition and the Script Studio Scriptitude Competition. His work appears in Amazing Stories, Weekly Humorist, Shoreline of Infinity, Creepypod, and Crimeucopia. His novel The Love Police was released last year. He is working on his sixth book.

NEX

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

In his three years as state superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most strident culture warriors in a state known for sharp-edged conservative politics. Following the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old nonbinary student a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools. In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr. Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex. “You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.” —The New York Times, February 23, 2024. A state senator [Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Tom Woods] said during a public forum in Tahlequah that LGBTQ+ people are “filth,” and that he and his constituents don’t want them in “our state.” —Tahlequah Daily Press, February 23, 2024. The police released video of the student, Nex Benedict, recounting the altercation a day before their death, which has drawn national scrutiny. —The New York Times, February 24, 2024

 

 
People insist flyover country 
gets a bad rap. It’s a place of trigger
happy Trumpy fundamentalists 
and bigots, dull and flat, filled with hate
incensed that Jackson could be replaced
by Tubman on the twenty where school 
principals don’t call ambulances 
when students are beaten for being 
who they are and thanks to someone named 
Chaya you can’t access the works of Toni 
Morrison or Kwame Alexander don’t you dare 
mention Harry Potter.
 
In the past I’ve insisted 
you can find fine dining 
excellent wine 
and terrific company anywhere
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
the flatlands are profound places
perfect for soul searching silence 
 
and now there are fine vineyards 
everywhere, even places where few
people if anyone speak French. 
 
But I feel prepared to recant 
any previous defense 
because you won’t be killed 
for using a bathroom
just anywhere. 
 
The State of Oklahoma has decided 
it officially, legally hates people 
who see themselves as people 
first, rather than female or male
 
and so a person 
—aren’t we all people first—
named Nex died 
after they 
a person 
used a bathroom for girls 
but some other girls backed
by the State of Oklahoma 
decided Nex shouldn’t 
because they wouldn’t 
say (like Beyoncé once did) 
if I were a boy 
 
it makes me think of the old bad days 
when people of color had to piss 
their pants because of No Service 
they could not be caught taking a leak 
in the street or out back of a building 
since the law 
always in vigilante hands  
would catch them dead 
for answering nature’s call. 
 
Oh, nature. Evil since Eve ate the apple. 
The State of Oklahoma seems to think 
nothing has changed since fictional Adam
couldn’t die when someone reached into 
his chest cavity—in a time before antiseptics—
and stole his rib, to plant in the Earth 
all so this curious miracle could be betrayed 
by one of only two genders. 
 
I want to ask those legislators 
in flyover Oklahoma and the 10  
states whose lawgivers spend their 
time snooping in stalls
(I want to ask my question preferably 
to their face)
 
And who’s the snake?  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/will appear in Terrain.org, Belt, Rattle, Wilderness House, Mad In America, Writers Resist, Poetica Review, and Unlikely Stories. Jeremy’s latest book is Flint River published by Alien Buddha Press 2023.

INSURRECTION MALAISE

by Tricia Knoll

Image via Getty Images.

I watched that mob with confederate flags 

use their poles as stabbers. I thought we could never

get beyond this, never heal, and their coiled timbersnake

curled all too ready to deliver poison. Threat 

on glaucous yellow background. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond this.  

My stomach seized. Like when the towers fell. 

How tear gas billows as if the theater director

called for high-tone smoke and no going home

with a program in my pocket because warplay 

has no script apparent to the watchers 

even if the actors think it does, yell

bad dialogue in murder tones. 

 

I thought we would never get beyond that. 

The next morning’s coffee bittered as if exposed

to air too long and even the cream wasn’t enough

to settle me. Then sugar dumped from a big spoon,

and more sugar from the same spoon, same mug.

It was not the same as getting through this. 

One minute of sweetness at the bottom. After 

in the morning joe. One at a time. 

Tricia Knoll is busy writing letters to Republican Senators about why they should vote to impeach. The fear on insurrection day was built on lies.

KARMA PLUS

by David Radavich





See what pure narcissism
brings forth: a great rot
in the communal apple.

The body politic
spoils top to bottom
and back again.

Every inequity
becomes deadly
as a snake.

We have long since
been thrown out
of the garden.

We roam streets
like zombies
in search of medicine
and care.

How can we be
one family

and not hug
our neighbors
as ourselves?

Pathogens know
our vulnerabilities
and strike
with clear knives.

In the dark night

we become
what we do
for one another.

David Radavich's latest narrative collection is America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019), companion volume to his earlier America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). Recent lyric collections are Middle-East Mezze (2011) and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.

WHELM

by Tricia Knoll

For the very first time, a Russian tanker has traversed the Northern Sea Route in winter without an icebreaker Getty via The Independent, March 1, 2018

The snake fell from a branch into his canoe
inside the open lid of a wicker picnic basket
of tuna sandwiches, potato chips, and pickles.
He skipped only three paddle strokes.

The police arrive en masse at the homeless shelter
to pick up a man with a false ID wanted
in four states for sex abuse and one officer
injects out-of-date Narcan into another man seen
dying of an overdose in the restroom. One life saved.

The electrician-son lives upstairs
in his mother’s house while she frets
over garlic mustard in her garden
and an infrequent overnight guest who gives her
homemade kimchi every Wednesday.

An old man wants to sing farewell to his wife
in a hospice room. She whispers behave yourself
over and over as he forgets the words
to the tune they used to dance to.

A woman named Hope excuses herself
by saying she told white lies for the President
as if whiteness makes her trumped-up story
less problematic than a black lie might be.

On You Tube puppies tumble, parrots dance, kittens pile up
in boxes, a calf falls in love with a blind bison, and a mini-pig
scratches his hindquarters on a table leg to collect millions
of hits and oh, did I ask what happened to Hope?

The extension of the Orca’s range into waters
where sea ice melts early? Red squirrels return
to the Scottish Highlands? Kids who go to school
demand changes in gun laws to keep them safe.

Tricia Knoll is an Oregon poet who sifts through the vagaries of Facebook entries and news nearly every day. Her new book How I Learned to Be White will be available from Antrim House Press and Amazon by the end of this month.

THE GOLDEN CALF

by Ed Shacklee

Photoshopped image by Freelancer at DemocraticUnderground.com.

Times were hard -- the fearful crowd, unruly,

felt they'd become a television serial

whose laughter track embarrassed them unduly;

they longed for prose both purple and imperial.

The promises the idol strung together

were catchy nonsense jingles if they'd listened.

Its hide, so thin, was stitched from shopworn leather.

A fool could tell it wasn't gold, but glistened;

but they were sold, for God was dead or missing -- 

the brazen moos would answer every prayer.

What did it matter what the snake was hissing?

The Trojan Horse was none of their affair.

Ed Shacklee is a public defender who represents young people in the District of Columbia. He is working on a bestiary.

REAWAKENED

by Richard Schnap




I hear the sound
Of drums approaching
Beating a rhythm
From the distant past

Down a ghostly road
That’s been reopened
To slither beneath
A bloodstained dawn

And in the wind
Come a thousand voices
Cheering the arrival
Of a man I’ve met before

Speaking a language
Of fashionable hatred
Designed to enshrine him
In the temple he’s rebuilt


Richard Schnap is a poet, songwriter and collagist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His poems have most recently appeared locally, nationally, and overseas in a variety of print and online publications.