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

Erin Murphy
What Did You Do Last Week?

1.  I lay in bed and thought of the AA mantra
     one day at a time and the Dolly Parton lyric
     I’ve had to think up a way to survive
     and the Becket line I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

2.  I scattered a few bucks like birdseed
     to causes I care about.

3.  I sat in meetings where there were calls
     to order and motions on motions,
     oceans of motions. Someone in the shadows
     was always taking minutes. Taking minutes.

4.  I went for a walk in a wetland preserve
     nestled between an asphalt company
     and the county courthouse. A northern flicker
     pecked for ground beetles. On its head:
     a red brushstroke like an artist’s
     afterthought. Or a warning. I wondered
     if birds have blood. I wondered if the people
     in power have feelings. I wondered
     if we’ll go on. I told myself we can’t
     not go on.

5.  I wrote this poem.

Erin Murphy is the author most recently of the poetry collections Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books, 2024) and Human Resources (forthcoming from Salmon Poetry). Her poems have appeared in diode, ONE ART, Eastern Iowa Review, Brick Road Poetry Press, Ilanot Review. and other journals. She is a professor of English at Penn State Altoona and poetry editor of The Summerset Review.

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

Birch Wiley
DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
an erasure of an executive order

Birch Wiley is a poet and librarian living in New York. Their work is forthcoming in Pleiades and Union Spring Literary Review, among others. Their first book, Mythweaver, will be published by new words {press} this summer.

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

Susanna Rich
Morning After the Election I Make My Bed

Sound bites and tallies
scrambled my comforter,
unfit the fitting.
This is my morning.
To grunt, tug, wrestle
the mattress cover
to knuckle under edges,
fist the corners.
I unfurl the top sheet
to complain like a mainsail
in heavy wind. The flap.
The collapse into wrinkles.
Mocking my hope of joy.
Tuck. Tuck. Everything
tucked. Folded onto itself.
Pillows, like blanked eyes.
The shams. The sham.
The blanket stretched hard
for the quarter to bounce
Washington’s profile,
check my skill, my worth.
I make my bed
to take back yesterday,
last week, summer,
wrestle the whole cloth,
hospital corners, quilted
down, the too many threads,
fluff the pillows, crawl
back in, pull the sheet
over my face.

Susanna Rich is the author of five poetry collections, most recently SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage (Blast Press, 2020) and Beware the House (Poet’s Press, 2019). Recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Collegium Budapest, she is a distinguished professor emerita of English at Kean University in Union, NJ. Rich presents one-woman, audience-interactive poetry experiences through her company Wild Nights Productions.

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

Margot Wizansky
In Florida, “Don’t Say Gay” Is the Law

The governor has a plan to keep children
from being infected with gay. A gay suppressant,
making the word gay illegal. We will all be silent,
eat cupcakes, tie orange bandanas around our necks,
suck the word gay from the English language.
We’ll blow the word out of classrooms, kiss it
good-bye, put it in the closet or send it off to camp,
swish the rooms clean of it. In art class we’ll
resume painting the still life of pansies and fruit,
pass by the window and look down low where
a bear has plugged the dike, go out the back door
and even now, the garden is full of zucchini ripening,
look up to see a rainbow and a chicken hawk flies by,
its prey an otter in the river or that puppy in the grass.

Margot Wizansky is the author of the poetry collection The Yellow Sweater (Kelsay Books, 2023) and the chapbook Wild for Life (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022). Her poems have appeared in journals including The American Journal of Poetry, The Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Ruminate, River Styx, and Cimarron, among others. Wizansky edited the anthologies Mercy of Tides: Poems for a Beach House, and Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains. With Wendy Drexler she co-edited What the Poem Knows, a tribute to beloved poet and workshop leader Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Now retired from a career developing housing for adults with disabilities, Wizansky lives in 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

Annie Bien
Undaunted

Downpours roil cliffside,
mudslides of thought excrement
burst as waterfalls.

A match sparks in flame,
stench of saliva spat sweat,
skin pores reeking sweat.

Mute wheezy voice, flesh
pores enlarged, inside each hole:
Spoiled old man ego.

See this illusion
created on boundless lies.
Keep your mind open.

This ocean of suffering
can be sailed, watch the star paths.
Moonglows are phases:

In full moon we see
The forks and roads to travel,
In new moon we move.

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 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

Laurel Brett
Rendezvous

If I should meet you
at the summit of a snowy mountain

let us not burden each other
with our stories of how the world

has wronged us—our genes,
our histories, our disappointments.

Instead, let us each pull up a chair
and say our names.

Let one of us point
to a peregrine falcon,

wings extended in an ecstasy
of flight, without remarking

on its predatory nature. Let
the other admire

the way the white around us
dazzles without remembering

the melting on Mt. Fuji.
It’s true—at the foot of this peak

the very fabric of the earth unravels.
We each know this. No need

to speak. For this moment—
a mountain, snow, a falcon and us.

Laurel Brett is the author of the novel The Schrödinger Girl (Kaylie Jones Books, 2020) and the literary critical study Disquiet on the Western Front: World War II and Postmodern Fiction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). Born in New York City, she lives in Port Jefferson, NY, and teaches in the English department at Nassau Community College in Garden City.

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

John Cross
Back to the Beginning

a child with a crayon spinning through the air
of a mostly invisible universe draws trees
& mountains lifting & falling with the breeze
draws one tiny man with wispy cockroach-leg hair
waiting for the firing squad he’s ordered
that’s meandered into the suburbs selling
sovereigntist anthems door to door
paper targets where their hearts should be
& the child imagines heat in a salt mine
near the hidden deep of the earth
that keeps pushing up red orange swirls
as any child might do & she scrawls
some forgotten word for how she feels right now

John Cross is the author of the poetry collection What Bleak Angels Carried Your Bed, forthcoming from Omnidawn Press, and the chapbook staring at the animal (Tupelo Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in journals including Volt, Lana Turner, and Yalobusha Review, among others. He teaches English at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena and lives in Monrovia, Calif., with artist Christine Kiphart and a dog named Gordon.

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

Linda McCauley Freeman
To Our Great and Anonymous Dead

You who suffered
baton blows,
cuffs and Klans, chains
and chances. You who held
the tantalizing tastes of freedom
on your tongue. You who stepped
up and stepped forward and stepped
out. You who saw a vision of this land
as one for all people. You who knew
our pronoun should always be we.
Not them. Not Other.
But sister and brother.
To our great anonymous dead,
lead us now against temptation
to block the news, to close
our eyes, to shrug, to sleep,
to lie down
and let it all die.

Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of The Marriage Manual: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2024) and The Family Plot: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2022). Her poems have appeared in journals including New World Writing Quarterly, Delta Poetry Review, Lightwood, Chronogram, and Fourth & Sycamore, among others. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor.

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

Karen Hildebrand
After the Supreme Court Ruling

Driving down a single laned road,
the kind made by two tire tracks,
patch of grass spiking between like a fresh
bikini wax, we’ve been invited to share
peach pie and despair. We
remark on the new sofa—zesty
mustard yellow—plans for the pile of rocks
out back, a new border that would pull
our state into the mothering arms of Canada
along with the green of Vermont. What if, will he,
should we, why not? When we stumble to the car,
Big Dipper bold overhead, I’m reminded of the dot-
by-dot celestial map, 7th grade science
homework, how to find the North Star.

Karen Hildebrand is the author of Crossing Pleasure Avenue (Indolent Books, 2018). Her newest poems appear in Defunct, LEON, Maintenant, Mom Egg Review, No Dear, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Braving the Body (Harbor Editions, 2024) and Beacon Radiant (Great Weather for Media, 2024). She writes about dance for Fjord Review and The Brooklyn Rail, and can be heard on the Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival podcast. Her poetry criticism appears in LEON Literary Review, Lily Poetry Review, Cutthroat, and Lightwood. She lives in Brooklyn.

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

Hilary Sideris
Man’s Man’s Man’s World

Hilary Sideris is the author of the poetry collections Calliope (Broadstone Books, 2024), Liberty Laundry (Dos Madres Press, 2022), Animals in English (Dos Madres Press, 2020), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press, 2019), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books, 2019), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful LLC, 2016), and Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada, 2014). Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Originally from Indiana and a longtime Brooklyn resident, she is a co-founder and curriculum developer for CUNY Start, a college preparatory program within the City University of New York.

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.