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Satan Escapes From Hell,
Headline, National Enquirer

by Jeff Crandall

Well, why not? It had to happen eventually.

Even the most heavily guarded prisons

are breached by craftier plans — a spoon

dug tunnel, the fork turned key. Any isolation

breeds ingenuity, and he had, after all, millennia.

Now on earth, breathing the nauseating

sulfur-free air, Satan has a cigarette.

Checks out the strip. Orders a pizza.

In a smoky hotel room he gets down

to the task of planning his next job.

No paltry cache of human souls

for this horned genius. Instead,

he unrolls the plans of heaven, hidden

in hell all these eons. He knows

the secret ways in, knows that even paradise

harbors its marginal crowd —

the ones who slipped through the back door,

or, wandering limbo, found a crack

in that gold wall. With so many crowds

of hosanna-screaming hosts, who could tell?

Tired of the daily hem-kissing,

the callused harp-plucking,

they’ll turn their wings willingly,

rise against the godhead, yearn

to serve a brighter star who rules

the heaven of flesh,

commands the pleasure

of fire’s delicious burning.

A heavy pounding at the door.

Ah, the pizza . . .

Jeff Crandall is a Seattle poet, glass artist and a founding editor of Floating Bridge Press. His work has appeared previously in Beloit Poetry Journal, Bloom, Cream City Review, JAMA, and Seattle Review, among others. His book of poems, The Grief Pool, was published by Firestorm Press.