Founder’s Day with its endless parade of souls,
crimson blood punch under the flaming trees,
families gathered on front porches, singing
black hosannas, fresh meat on the barbecue.
A day in hell is an eternity of torture,
though time is halted on holidays. A citizen
might visit the River Styx for skeletal fish,
dangle his shriveled worm and catch
his dinner above the gulf between worlds.
From such delights are holidays made in hell.
For every holy day on earth a day is set aside
for the underworld. Church calendars filled
with feasts of saints are doubled below
with festival days for the worst murderers.
The Celebration of the Feast of St. Theodore
del Bundy begins with a women’s 10K run,
and though no one finishes the race,
every woman becomes a sacrificial winner.
Demons observe Thanklessgiving, a day to
count your curses and curse others for
their purity, like pilgrims arriving in the new
world, a holiday of liberating bondage
and spiritual torture. There’s Pol Pot Days
with its chorus of singing skulls. Starving
peasants eating their fill on Josef Stalin Day.
Satanmas, of course, is the highest order
of hellish holiday. On that day, our Lord of
Flies was born. Gifts are given to unloved ones,
the dispossessed congregants of hell,
those sweetly suffering souls whose lives
were never saved, hearts never sealed,
receiving their black host at Midnight Mass.

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Robin Shepard’s work has recently been published or will appear in Naugatuck River Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Quibble, and Ghost City Review.