A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Linda Hillman Chayes
Election Lament

          after Larry Levis

Soon, without exception, everyone
will be carved from stone.
The fountains in the courtyards and airports will run
                               dry & bone & airless,

Elephants in the room & lion-tamers in cages.
O composer for clown horns,
Laureate of the run-on verse, you
might suppose this is written about you…

If not, who? Women who wait in doorless waiting rooms?
Burning men who fight with foam under the Thunderdome?

Goodbye, little country.
Goodbye, neighborhoods of tolerance, bicyclists pedaling
from one end of town to the other
skirting mildew, shadow,
the bleak of sirens.

You can see that I am spinning
signals in spent bursts,
                               much like, as I peck my way
forward, the birdsong of someone
too tired to sleep as the bicycle horns bleep and bleep.

I beg your pardon, but did we not shout through a bullhorn
as if our lives depended on it?

And this cotton-candy truth on which we string our belief
less and less, at the hands of a jester.

For no reason and because
I can find no other compelling question, does everything we hold dear
even as a flag of spun sugar,
dissolve?
Devoured. By mouth

Linda Hillman Chayes is the author of the poetry chapbooks Not My First Walk on the Moon (2024) and The Lapse (2014), both from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in journals including Kestrel, American Poetry Journal, Bracken, Quartet, Westchester Review, 2 Horatio, and others. With Therese Rosenblatt, she co-edited The Voice of the Analyst: Narratives in Developing a Psychoanalytic Identity (Routledge, 2017). She holds a PhD in clinical psychology from City College of the City University of New York and is a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Barbara Reynolds
Message to the World

The voice persists
like stridulating crickets,
raising eyebrows,
eliciting groans.
Bullish, its tongue
tramples bare-headed facts,
and dodges carpets
of moss-capped moans.
Like eager talons
snatching herring
from the sea,
its fictions expunge
and loot.
Beware the strut
usurping the truth—
its comb sports a blade
and its claw a boot.

Barbara Reynolds‘s poems have appeared in Pangyrus, Avocet, What Rough Beast, Muddy River Poetry Review, and The Somerville Times, as well as in several anthologies. She is a retired math professor living in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Oz Hardwick
The Results Are In

Oz Hardwick is the author most recently of the poetry collection Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog, 2024). His poems have appeared in The Mackinaw, Anthropocene, One Hand Clapping, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Wordgathering, and other journals. In 2024 he received both the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and the Dolors Alberola International Poetry Prize.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Suzanne Osborne
Lullaby in a Time of Sorrow

          Nov. 6, 2024

The sun came up anyway
in a sky blue as 9/11.
I took a walk anyway
scuffing through leaves dead
as all my hopes.

There, there, now, now.
Don’t mope. Tomorrow
you’ll find a way to live
in this alien world
but for now feed the cat
meowing round your feet.

Musk, Hegseth, Kennedy.

There, there, now, now.
Just keep busy. Do
the crossword, do Wordle
and Spelling Bee—see?
you’re a genius, now isn’t that nice?

Greenland, Panama.

There, there, now, now.
They won’t hand over the canal.
A fairy-tale ogre’s threats, just set
them to music and sing yourself
to sleep. Tomorrow the sun will rise
as it always has, you’ll feed the cat
as you always do, take a walk as you always
do, watch the world change as it always
does, the sun will set again as it always
has and will till time runs down and all
our little hopes and fears are done.

There, there. Now, now.

Suzanne Osborne‘s poems have appeared in journals including What Rough Beast, A River Sings, Jonah Magazine, Neologism Poetry Journal, and New Plains Review, among others. After an early career in theater, a stint in academia, and too many years as a legal secretary, she now lives in Forest Hills, NY, and writes poetry.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Anna Van Lenten
Inauguration Over, the Smiths, the Beatles, and Shakespeare Gather in the Gowanus Whole Foods Parking Lot

The Gowanus Whole Foods parking lot, nth family shop.
It’s February, 2025, and there’s everything to love
and to lose. (Try to remember, the genome’s predictive power
is very low—five or ten percent.)

You clasp close the safety belt, gather a chestful of air
for home. A tsunami of heat and light spills into the body of the car
and yours with it.
The windshield glass, with its loving fingers, rakes the fur of your fatigue.
Once again, you fall asleep in the Whole Foods—
              —PAUSE—
              for 11 minutes, doze as a lioness who once upon a time
              prowled the bars at a zoo, her ferocity forgiven but not forgotten.

Somewhere your spirit animal stretches, opens an auspicious eye.
Meat is Murder on the radio. Your planet’s smithy,
befouled, needs a power wash.
What did you get?
               Honey Bear $3.00
               Brown Cow $4.13
               Blue Herring $4.94
               Blood Orange $1.26
So many animals in money—blood even. Rejuvenating.
The negotiations you make to ingest one…be one.
But you were extracted from inside one
              a swaddle for a parachute.
So, it took half a lifetime to learn how to crash,
only to find all along
it was a test, dummy test.
Take five, this time with feeling.

This term’s going to be rough, kids, fasten your seat belts.
Still, even Obama killed thousands—did his dead feel less?
              Ah but he did it remote—so elegant, so fine—Michelle knows:
              Sleep pretty darling, do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby…

Above all do no harm / To live is to harm:
No math will square that circle;
descend, aliens—show us the way (telepathically of course).
Because words…sigh.
What to dream of?
Diamond-star specials in the asphalt,
the air gusts with snow-sparkle puffs…
Always, your need for out-of-body experiences;
this world puts price tags on everything
—always the need for more courage, for right words right order.
Read less.
Read more.

Exiting the lot (fault lines everywhere, and you ready to fight)
you learn BBC reporter Fergan Keane
has discovered the secret to a happy life.
Fresh memory—at the Gowanus Canal drawbridge with your daughter
              February, 2017 (that election):
              she closed her eyes for two seconds / you clicked.
              (The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp.)
And the Canal cruised past, oblivious—
emptying itself then re-filling,
week in, week out, like we must do now.

Anna Van Lenten is the communications coordinator at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. She curated a highly regarded series of photography exhibits at the Half King bar and restaurant in New York from 2010 to 2019. In 2016 Van Lenten founded LightField, an arts organization in the Hudson Valley, producing multimedia exhibits in New York and Dubai. Her essay about Gerda Taro and Lee Miller appeared in Musee Magazine. She holds an MFA in fiction from The New School.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House

Guillermo Filice Castro
I Am Not Alone: Equilibrium

I am looking for balance. Steady ship
on a serene, sparrow-crossed ocean. Balance.
Avoid phone notifications though something
may slip through. My love for the world,
if I can call it that, this life, breaks my heart.
Hope the cat won’t soil the floor again, disturbed by
a different litter or who knows what. How sublime
to watch her high wire act along the edge of the sofa,
not a single misstep, while last week a runaway
dump truck smashed clean into our local store.
My little suburban world on a hill, shaken.
We had an earthquake, too. Another ICE raid.
Small & cave-bound, the best among us
would sketch hunt scenes on walls. Tomorrow
the noise of light & revision might kill off
this poem losing its footing. The glass Father
left unwashed in the sink. No matter
what I did, they, my parents, always fought,
even if I prayed or didn’t touch myself for a week,
Mother still tried to jump out of his moving car.
My favorite book as a teen was The Omen II,
turned on by what felt like sexual tension
between the young antichrist & his cousin.
I am in love with the son of the devil, something
I could say now to upset Christian nationalists.
Balance. After choir practice: a quiet room.
Then flames tore through the clutter in my school.
What can love do. Rebuild, try again.

Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of the chapbooks Mixtape for a War(Seven Kitchens Press, 2018) and Agua, Fuego (Finishing Line Press, 2015). His work has appeared in journals including Allium, Barrow Street, Brooklyn Rail, Fugue, Mulberry Literary Review, New Verse News, Pine Hills Review,and others, and is included in Best American Poetry 2023, edited by Elaine Equi. Born and raised in Argentina, Castro lives in New Jersey with his husband.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Sarah Key
At Night I Dream of Mariupol

The city always had a special smell:
  a bitter aroma of frozen grapes
    smoke emanating from family houses
      the smell of dust settled to the ground by the long-awaited rains.

What do I do tomorrow?
  I used to have a thousand plans and a million wishes.

How many steps to the sea? 
  I knew exactly 
    how many steps 
      to the sea and how many 
        trees in the park’s central alley 
          there were.

Dark, cold room without windows or a glimpse of light.
  The walls and the floor are shaking.

Gasoline for bread
  bread for cigarettes
    cigarettes for firewood.

Tore off wooden floors and windowsills to use for fire to cook.

And we went to get water 
  stepping over the bodies of people 
    who went to get water the day before. 
      They drank water from puddles.
        Happy are those who found natural springs.

We heard a piercingly loud whistling sound followed by a loud blow.

People just lie covered with sheets. Everywhere.
  We saw blood on the children’s faces.

I saw only my neighbor’s shoe on the floor.

There was constant darkness, day and night.

Author’s Note: This poem is a quilting together of the voices of Anna Murlykina, Kristina Khodunova, Petro Andrushchenko, Hanna Drobot, Serhii Dolhopolov, Marianna Saenko, and Liubov recorded and translated from the Russian and Ukrainian by Olena Ivantsiv, Kateryna Iakovllenko and Tteiana Bezruk, journalists from Ukraine, as quoted in “What Happened on Day 45 of the War in Ukraine,” The New York Times, April 9, 2022.

Lisa Andrews is the author of The Inside Room (Indolent Books 2018) and Dear Liz (Indolent Books 2016). Her poems have appeared in Cagibi, Cordella, Gargoyle, POSTstranger, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Zone 3, as well as in anthology Braving the Body (Harbor Editions 2024), edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, visual artist Tony Geiger.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Lisa Andrews
I’ve been meaning to thank you.

Forgive me for taking so long to thank you,
but the list—Vance knows—is so long,
and, really, how to thank you is a question
I’ve been asking myself. Is there enough ink
in this pen? Enough rare earth in this phone?
Enough blood and bone in each finger to thank you
for taking democracy to the tanning booth,
where you lie (but always with that long, red tie).
Something covers your eyes. How to thank you?
Vance, too, for helping me in this matter.
How doubly forgetful of me. The lies
are so beautiful. I have eaten them all.

Lisa Andrews is the author of The Inside Room (Indolent Books 2018) and Dear Liz (Indolent Books 2016). Her poems have appeared in Cagibi, Cordella, Gargoyle, POSTstranger, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Zone 3, as well as in anthology Braving the Body (Harbor Editions 2024), edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, visual artist Tony Geiger.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.

Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Annie Bien
THIS IS GONNA MAKE GREAT TELEVISION or the Broken Megaphone

SAY THANK YOU
SAY THANK YOU
HE DOESN’T HAVE THE CARDS

Why don’t you wear a suit?
Why do you come here dressed like that?

YOU ARE DISRESPECTFUL BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T SAY THANK YOU

there’s a line in a lifeline that favors truth amidst lies that lies dormant in the liars and though it is not immediate the impact of the subsequent karmic reaction of lie after lie burns into the future, cruelty comes as care only for a self that is made by layer after layer of prevarications

MAKE A DEAL OR YOU’RE OUT
SAY THANK YOU
YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY CARDS

SAY THANK YOU

At night one pair of eyes squeeze shut but not shut, a mind filled with molten unfinished sentences—constantly step on another, thoughts to unlisten—no one no one talks to me that way because I’m great I’m great—I’m great I’m great—I’m great I’m great—I’m a king a king

Another pair of eyes, hears air raid sirens, people silenced, buildings collapse, a refrain from the lies, thrown out from room with flags and press publicly shamed, but his stride more noble than the suited men in overly long red and blue flapping ties. An owl stares from a branch unblinking:

доброї ночі
доброї ночі
друзі
доброї ночі
вороги
доброї ночі
на один день, коли ми помремо
Я не буду шкодувати, але щодо вас, навіть якби ви це зробили, це було б брехнею.

good night
good night
friends
good night
enemies
good night
for one day when we die
I won’t regret it, but for you, even if you did, it would be a lie.

Annie Bien is the author of the poetry collections Under Shadows of Stars(Kelsay Books, 2017) and Plateau Migration (Alabaster Leaves Press, 2012). Her story Earthen Sky won the London Independent Story Prize for flash fiction (2020). Bien’s translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts appear in the digital repository 8400. Her poetry and flash fiction have appeared in The Wild Word, The Banyan Review, MockingHeart Review, WordCityLit, Autumn Sky Poetry, and other journals. She lives in Brooklyn where she teaches meditation and qigong.

Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

If you like Second Coming and you want to support the work of Indolent Books, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.

You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.