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

Andrea Fry
Slime Zone

At the birthday party in Liberty Mall, the metaphor slapped me in the face like a blob
of Jello, struck me that the world was his toy. A world of borax, water and glue,

which he commandeered as his very own sensory play substance. The birthday boy
wore a bedazzled apron coveted by his playmates who circled him like charged ions,

each with their own personal pot of slime to squeeze and shape. But it’s by his solo hands
we hurtle now into inanity like a 1950s sci-fi movie.

So today I stopped writing confessional poetry and took up the political pen. But how to say
Shame on him! any differently when we are far past that, when we are drowning in the Zone?

I wanted my poem to shout How does this end? In the movie, “The Blob,” the townspeople
gather up CO₂ extinguishers and freeze the creature to a solid, then ship it to the Arctic.

Please understand this is not comic relief. But the Mentors say you should never force
your poem to a preconceived conclusion—let the direction of the poem reveal itself.

 So, I’ve been trying to let my political poem reveal itself which feels like asking
a Ouija board for an authentic resolution as history unravels. I can’t help but ask

just how does it end?

Andrea Fry is the author of The Bottle Diggers (Turning Point Press, 2017) and Poisons & Antidotes (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The Sun, Synkroniciti, Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, and Cimarron Review, among others. A retired oncology nurse practitioner, Fry lives with her husband and two cats in Brookline, 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 it, 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

José Sotolongo
Madeira

The man I roomed with—
let’s call him John,
teeth like white hatchets—
came in my dreams, then
said he was leaving to live
in Madeira, where the wine is
sweet like the government,
the one for us here
gone bad and then bitter,
debauched.

José Sotolongo is the author of the novel The Scented Chrysalis (Adelaide Books, 2019). His novel The Optimistic Cuban (Histria Fiction, 2025) is available now for pre-order. Sotolongo’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Atticus Review, The Cortland Review, The Southampton Review, Third Coast, Border Crossing, and other journals. Born in Cuba, he lives with his husband in New York’s Catskill Mountains.

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 it, 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

Paula Colangelo
In Dark Times

            for Cory Booker

While I lay slung in the water
a sailboat aground
one man stood and spoke 
for 25 hours. His point—
It’s time to speak out
for all to rise and stand 
upright, our moral moment,
unyielding
to hold the room
for as long as our legs
will support us.

Paula Colangelo‘s poems have appeared in Salamander, Sugar House Review, SWWIM Every Day, Lily Poetry Review, and Slant, among other journals, and her book reviews appear in Pleiades and Rain Taxi. Colangelo received Binghamton University’s George R. Dunham Poetry Prize sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University where she received the Jane Coil Cole Scholarship.

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 it, 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

Michael T. Young
For the Last Time

Samuel Johnson said, somewhere,
“mankind has a horror of the last.”
So I wonder

how much of my past is tagged
with that little devouring phrase,
“never again”?

Was my friend’s “goodbye” last night
the last? Most times
we don’t know

and not knowing is merciful to me
in a way it wasn’t to
Hossam Shabat,

who signed his last note
“for the last time,”
and stepped out

into the Gaza streets, there
to document the airstrikes.
Imagine

closing the door at twenty-three,
knowingly, on every future:
with friends

and family, with fellow reporters,
closing it on the stars
and the stories

they tell, to sleep on pavements
under their lines spinning
all night,

and repeating, even after
he’s gone, his last message
to go on.

Michael T. Young is the author most recently of The Infinite Doctrine of Water (Terrapin Books, 2018) and Mountain Climbing a River, forthcoming from Broadstone Media in 2025. His poems have appeared in ONE ART, Rattle, Peacock Journal, Unbroken, and Vox Populi, among other journals, and has been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac.

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 it, 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

Chad Parenteau
Face Hugs Leopard

“Trump Voter Says He Doesn’t Regret Choice Despite Wife’s ICE Arrest”
––Newsweek headline, March 19, 2025

Thanks to the authorities,
I know where my property is.

She makes enough of a racket,
they’re not going to lose her.

I am apex predator in waiting,
giddy to be next level trained.

Got the jawline of a provider,
already down for the next hunt.

Beasts have glommed onto me.
Symbiotic––or is it the other one.

Their warm breath, tinged with
blood loss, purrs me to sleep.

Chad Parenteau‘s most recent poetry collections are All’s Well Isn’t You and Cant Republic: Erasures and Blackouts. His poems have appeared in Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets (Louisiana Literature Press, 2007) and The Vagabond Lunar Collection (Vagabond, 2024), among others. He is associate editor of Oddball Magazine, co-organizer of the annual Boston Poetry Marathon, and hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series.

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 it, 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

Sarah Dickenson Snyder
Praise This Wakening into Light  

nothing is ever one thing  I never want something wild in my house      but I’m wild
about milky tea and homemade soup   the clean light-green slice of an avocado   I could bathe
in cilantro  in lemons  in red wine  find me wild on summer bike rides where I say thank you!
into wind   I am wild about grammar    I am wild about letters and words but have misspelled many
on a chalkboard     thank goodness for students who fixed my mistakes   I am wild
about middle school hands in the air    the squeals of wanting    to answer or ask a question   maybe
to hear their own voices     in the universe     I want to help save the world
from those with guns   I want to affix wings on children cowering under desks     lift them out
of a brokenness    I want to grow flowers in the hearts of parents       I want the fires to end  
the smoke to clear   the fear to disappear     this world might be ending   so how am I still  wild
about my feet especially after I paint my toenails pink    I’m surprised that the small girl
sitting on cement steps in the scalloped-edged photo is the same as the wilder bra-less one
in college   and then   all that searching    no one to keep warm   there is not one single speck
of me that wants to die   and yet          one day even the sun      will be done  

Sarah Dickenson Snyder is the author of the poetry collections Now These Three Remain (Lily Poetry Review, 2023), With a Polaroid Camera (Main Street Rag, 2019), Notes from a Nomad (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Human Contract (Kelsay Books, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO, among other journals. Snyder lives in Vermont, where she carves in stone and rides her bike. 

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 it, 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

Phyllis Klein
Naming Grief

Kip’s sign Stop the Genocide letters painted
in red green & black, he stands there every Sunday for Gaza,
almost a fixture in front of Country Sun
with a mural of sunflowers on its alley side.

I want that too. I want coexistence. I want Obama to copter
onto the flat roof, shimmy down to where we stand,
drama of a hero on Cal Ave.  I want him
to defang the acid in my windpipe, give me a hug.

And yes, I want truce, I want treaty, but Kip hates Harris,
Let the old order fail he says, & I hate him the way
he hates Harris & as if he is holding a rifle instead of a sign.

Suppose the stars are just our grief reflected back to us
I read in a poem. Each incandescent surge a laser arm targeting
our hearts. Is that why we can’t look up for too long anymore, 
keep our distance, it’s too empty-frigid, & the mirrors could blind us.

We are in a dream, I’m telling him catastrophe and he’s
saying Let it come. I am cold sweat on a bed of nails.

Oh, stargazing was romantic when we were young, lying on blankets 
in meadows after dark watching them shoot like phosphorous 
champagne uncorked across the night. I want us to be wiser now, 

we are grayer, definitely sadder—Kip laughs chill out, 
you should believe in the good in people. I am sobbing lava.

All the heavenly bodies in graves dug with blood lust, 
music lovers at a festival, hostages, entire villages blinking down
on us in silence, myriad eyes begging.

We know they’re not coming back. In another dream
Harris leads us forward—We’re not going back. We’re not
going back. But the stars don’t know our names or who we love. 

Kip and me, two ways of heartbreak. We can agree it’s fear—
that planet too far from the sun, pulls us out of orbit. Without fear 
we are everything beautiful. We are all the art in every museum. Until
fear’s wrecking balls batter us into ghosts, facing ourselves in a darkroom
under development. I watch the answer dissolve when light hits the negative.

Both of us trying to find a name for grief. He wants to be a troubadour
for peace. This week he says It’s so good to see a warm-hearted person.
He calls his sign colors of affliction. I am dragon of sorrow. 

Phyllis Klein is the author of The Full Moon Herald (Grayson Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, The Minnesota Review, and SWWIM Everyday, among other journals, as well as in anthologies including California Fire and Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology (Story Street Press, 2020), Fog and Light: San Francisco Through the Eyes of Poets Who Live Here (Blue Light Press, 2021), and I Can’t Breathe: A Poetic Anthology of Social Justice (Kistrech Theatre International, 2021). A psychotherapist by profession, Klein lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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 it, 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

Rosanne English
The Skull

I lit the skull candle
with the intention

of burning it down.
It’s been waxing

on the console
a year. The wick

is charred. I turn
the record player on

and listen to Brat
by Charli xcx—

wonder about green,
apples, girls,

and meaning.
I can vote early

today if I want
in Orangetown.

But maybe I want to wait
for Election Day. To feel

the atmosphere at Grace Church.
The flame is high.

My dog licks her inner thigh.

Rosanne English holds an MFA from NYU and is working on her first collection. She lives in the Hudson Valley. 

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 it, 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

Paula Rudnick
Changed

A Delta jet landed on its roof last week,
hanging passengers upside down like bats
surveying crumbs from their last snack,
their condition changed from light to leaded,
winged to grounded, safe to dangling
at the moment they thought they had arrived.
I did 45 sit-ups this morning—
not bad for a person my age.
My body didn’t ache too much
when I got out of my organic-fiber bed.
The coffee exceptionally good today,
just the right amount of strong,
mellowed by a splash of half-and-half
sipped slowly from an antique floral mug.
The lemon-ginger scone I quick-defrosted  
tasted almost like fresh-baked
and the lilies that I bought on sale
yesterday perfumed the air.
No one shot at me when I picked up the newspaper,
dropped at my front door before dawn’s light,
my life unchanged from how it was
a month ago, except nothing’s the same. 
Inside my chest a heaviness I can’t cocktail-hour away,
inside my throat a rant ready to spill.
The small blue leatherette passport
I used to flash invincibly makes me lower eyelids
when border guards request my documents now
like in some vintage black and white movie
where things get bad and then there’s no escape
and I am bolted to my seat prepared for impact,
weighing whom to call to pledge my love.

Paula Rudnick is the author of Now is Not a Good Time (independently published, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, LA Jewish Journal and Kosmos Quarterly, as well as in several anthologies. A former TV producer whose credits range from late-night rock-and-roll shows to Emmy-nominated movies, Paula lives in Los Angeles.

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 it, 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

Susan M. Craig
Today the sky

ineffably blue—all while I’ve read the fires are only
five miles distant—five miles in these Blue Ridge mountains
dense with brittle hardwood, underclad with contorted

mountain laurel—deep green rhododendron budded, not yet
bejeweled in fuchsia. I walk with the dog across the little river
bridge—a river which seems more like a trickling

dream. Rain has been scanty the first of spring.
The bridge rails are crafted of laurel branches—mountain ivy,
the longtime locals call it. How I love this art

of imperfection, no twig the same, no call for straight lines.
A white-haired man comes out of his cottage and waves a welcome.
Come closer, he motions, points to his right ear.

We amble nearer—his cheeks are ruddy, his smile
alive with gumption—his fleece vest burred in leaf fragments,
detritus of bark, shed hair of a yellow dog.

I ask if he plans to evacuate—he responds with a rousting negative.
He exhorts me not to panic, says he’s a retired fireman.
This is no fire! he exclaims; scoffs at smoke like a little brother.

These hardwoods, he declares, will not burn like California.
He gestures to the lush looming forest, our common haven.
I notice his red ball cap’s white letters “Make America…”

I do not lean closer to finish the sentence. Even so, his proclamation
leaves me momentarily reassured, held in sway by some old
generational bravado—and yet there are truths

belying words—that winds can roar like dragons—
that Helene downed limbs and scattered brush, perfect tinder.
That we live in a different day.

He said last night his wife was desperate to leave.
We’ve got nothing to worry about, he assured her.
I smile wordless, the dog and I stroll off like silent siblings.

Today the sky ineffably blue—and yet
some odd quality of light I remember, this
oblique tone of a looming giant.

Today—the sky.
I leave with the dog and our belongings
just before the mandatory order comes through.

Should I worry for them, this couple of an ages-old paradigm?
He so certain he has nothing to fear—not the inferno,
not the smoke, not the earth’s

undoing.  Today the sky—ineffably blue.
Ashes float like pieces of feathers. On my way home,
the valleys are swallowed in smoke.

Susan M. Craig is the author of the chapbook Hush (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared in Poetry South, Mom Egg Review, Kakalak, Quiet Diamonds, Jasper and other journals. She is a visual artist and lives in Columbia, SC.

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 it, 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.