A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Jane Putnam Perry Propulsion
the push pushing of paradox until it becomes folly a projection of inconsistency so far beyond quibbling as to be bull a propulsion of rigmarole until it becomes rant ejaculating romance throwing bombast flinging twaddle until it turns to fudge or rubbish or pure piffle
we toss trash shoot slipslop discharge flummery while calling it balderdash this is insanity rot tripe I want to throw things all the vagary and foolery and the mummery and monkey-tricks feel like darts a quarry so full of extravagance
Jane Putnam Perry is the author of the memoir White Snake Diary: Exploring Self-Inscribers (Atmosphere Press, 2020) and the academic book Outdoor Play: Teaching Strategies with Young Children (Teachers College Press, 2001). Her work has appeared in journals including Blood Orange Review, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Paper Dragon,and Still Point Arts Quarterly.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Dale Going Got No Cognitive
I’ve got no cognitive problem I have no cognitive there’s no cognitive problem got no cognitive what about the goose the geese what about the geese they were all missing I don’t know Howie Howie Howie I have no idea I think it’s accurate I mean I think it’s accurate why don’t you go after the newspaper that wrote it don’t blame me never touches the human hand nice and full never touched a human hand nice and clean Jill get your fat husband off the couch get that fat pig off the couch tell him to go and vote for Trump he’s going to save our country get that guy the hell off our get him up Jill slap him around get him up get him up Jill we want him off the couch to get out and vote
Dale Going is the author of The Beautiful Language of Our Disaster (Codhill Press, 2025) and the chapbook For the Anniversaries of All Loving Kinds of Meetings (Albion Books,2025). Her previous collections are The View They Arrange (Kelsey St. Press, 1994) and As/of the Whole (San Francisco State University, 1990). She has received grants from Fund for Poetry and California Arts Council, and residencies at Yaddo, Watermill Center, Wedding Cake House and Djerassi. Recent poems appear in Annulet, Interim, digital vestiges, New American Writing, VOLT, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in New York 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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Denver Butson Question or Prayer (for the masters and servants of war and for those who look away)
in the afterlife if there is an afterlife what will you tell those who came before you about how you behaved in the room they prepared for you the room they swept and scrubbed and freshened for you to walk into to sleep and love in what will you tell them you did with the book of regrets they left for you in this room to read to memorize to not repeat to not repeat what they had done to others or what others had done to them when this room was their room as briefly as it is your room to live in to sleep in to love in will you tell them you heeded their request their plea their prayer for you to leave the room cleaner than you found it to make the book of regrets thinner and lighter than they left it for you
And how will you look them in the eye and explain yourself those whose suffering begged you not to make others suffer the same how will you justify what you have done what you are doing to others or what you have asked others what you are asking others to do to others or what you have turned your eyes away from others doing to others what you are turning your eyes away from and allowing others to do to others while this ancient room is your room
how will you ask their forgiveness those who prepared this room for you their forgiveness for what they and others cannot possibly forgive you for in this or any other room
in this or any other afterlife if there is an afterlife?
Denver Butson is the author of The Scarecrow Alibis (Cloudbank Books, 2022), the sum of uncountable things (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), illegible address (Luquer Street Press, 2004), Mechanical Birds (St. Andrews Press, 2001), and triptych (The Commoner Press, 1999). In 2020 he received the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. He lives with his wife and daughter in Brooklyn, 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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Susana H. Case How to Survive Dictatorship
Twist its neck to paralyze your chicken, so neighbors won’t hear squawking and report you. Pluck feathers with curtains drawn, each member of the family taking a handful to dispose of one street over. Don’t cook chicken in the common kitchen, where neighbors might walk in. Curry the chicken in the middle of the night on the outside terrace, fragrance masked with herbs, hope that everyone stays asleep during food shortages. Yes, the chicken may be bitter, but your neighbors don’t have any—they will report you. Get rid of the evidence of bones—crush them to use in soup. Carefully self-manage your abortion, hide evidence of your medication, in case you live in the United States, where your neighbors will report you.
Susana H. Case is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently If This Isn’t Love (Broadstone Books, 2023), and co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press, 2022), a finalist for Best Book and International Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest. The first of her five chapbooks, The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press, 2002) was released in an English-Polish edition, Kawiarnia Szkocka, by Opole University Press, and in an English-Ukrainian edition, Шотландська Кав’ярня, by Slapering Hol Press.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Austin Alexis Immigrants at the Southern Border
You tread across days, weeks only to encounter barbed wires gleaming in sunlight, glowing like hell-flames. You attempt to maneuver through the spikey metal. Each move you make you step into a miniature cage.
Separated from your family in order to provide for your family, you know the loneliness of cactus-heavy desert, of a jailcell housing a single cot.
You don’t need to be called an animal to understand the zoo of detention or the mistreatment of being released back to the hometown violence you have been trying to escape. You don’t need to be referred to as poison to comprehend the prison of labels, or to “get” how words, in the wrong mouth, become not only a toxic drink but a lethal one.
Austin Alexis is the author of the chapbooks Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & OtherPoems, both from Poets Wear Prada, and the full-length collection Privacy Issues published by Broadside Lotus Press. His second full-length collection, The Whirlpool Bath, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in late-summer 2025. He was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Competition in 2024.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Simon Leonard Amerika
Amerika: The fascist or racist aspect of American society. From German Amerika; from the likening of the U.S. to Nazi Germany. The first known use of Amerika in the meaning defined above was in 1968 among New Left activists in the U.S. —Merriam-Webster, adapted
In the Amerikan gallery of great men we find this image of a defiant patriot, who, finally and quite by chance, found what to be outraged about. The glaze of his face is stained with strawberry blood; ungovernable, his arm challenges that other world to take a better shot, the clench of his jaw final confirmation that those unnumbered unnamables might strive, but Amerika, my Amerika — continent twisted out of coal, casinos and swimsuit beauty, land of fake tans because we can, wrought from the disappointment of factory dreams by a blow-dried god refusing to give up on his raw-hide truth, or his grip on the sacred and mysterious uterus, this Amerika is the privilege they can never take away from me. Just let them try, his furious triumph tells us, and they will see how my Amerika becomes me.
Simon Leonard is the author of the chapbook Before I Forget (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Orbis, Envoi, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Roi Fainéant and Overheard, and other journals. Leonard teaches English at St. George’s The British International School in Cologne, Germany.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Vicki lorio Spring Break
I knew the moment when his sperm met my egg no amount of douche
awash in my canal could wash away this union. I diagnose my dilemma sitting in my car
frozen at the traffic light that changes from red to green to red in the early morning light, so much for spring break.
Who was that guy anyway? Just an idle diversion. He does not taste my shame like I still taste him.
This would have been a clean sweep in the time of my mother, my mother of the burnt bra and loose nipples.
No more Roe v. Wade, all slaves now— we row when our white masters tell us to row.
Vicki lorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch (Local Gems Press, 2013), NotSorry (Alien Buddha Press, 2020), and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter (dancinggirlpress, 2015) Something Fishy (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Blabbermouth (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, The Fem Lit Mag, Black Coffee Review, Mom Egg Review, and other journals.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Elaine Sexton Sleeve
I finger the cardboard cover of this cardboard take-out coffee cup, here to protect my palm, but what
a waste of a tree, a life, whittled down to––this paper, this pencil, too, this idea
in my calloused hand with its half-life of bearing and soothing, folded under my chin, left into right,
on my lap when not called on to scratch my back or pat the dog or touch a scar where a hot pot scalded
skin, uncovered, the way the day is born with no promises. Late light lances winter tree branches,
trees whose gnarled trunks stand with old poles made of Southern yellow pine, or Douglas fir,
Western red cedar. Oh trees, oh power lines no longer needed¬––what utility now? Now we are wired and
wireless. Wired and tired I like to say. What else could we be, living as we do, as we must––through this.
Elaine Sexton‘s fifth collection of poetry, Site Specific: New & Selected, is forthcoming from Grid Books in 2025. Her poems are widely anthologized and published in journals including American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and O! the Oprah Magazine. She is the author of the libretto for The Post Office, a chamber opera in poems, in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky, commissioned by Queen City Opera and developed by Opera Fusion: New Works/Cincinnati Opera. Sexton lives in New York and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Buffy Shutt I Will Read Myself Out of This
How many books can I read in 1460 days? I didn’t miss the peek-a-boo bra in the Rotunda or the ten or 12 billionaires of America’s 758 in front of the cabinet or the Vaquero hat Flotus wore to keep his lips off her.
I didn’t miss my heart racing.
1637 Tulipomania in Holland 1921 Analysis-mania. The good breast and the bad breast. 1964 Beatlemania 1965 She attends the LBJ inauguration ball. She is 15. Only a handful of millionaires. Snow on the ground. Who doesn’t remember people in boots at The Statler Hilton? 1994 Sex mania. Clinton is the first president to send an email from the White House. 2013 Bacon-mania: Sales climb 9.5% hitting an all-time high of nearly $4 billion. 2017 Bitcoin-mania. 2025 Flotus joins in. ?-2025 Transgender-mania. About 1.14% of the population identifies as transgender.
Read about Moral panic: A widespread feeling of fear that an evil person or thing threatens the values, interests and well-being of a community.
Read about Hysteria: A nervous affection, occurring almost exclusively in women, in which the emotions are exaggerated, will power diminished, the woman loses control over emotions, becomes the victim of imaginary sensations. The chief symptoms are convulsive, tossing movements of the limbs and head, uncontrollable crying, a choking sensation as if a ball were lodged in the throat.
Buffy Shutt is a poet living in Los Angeles. She worked to help people in Altadena after the Eaton Fire. She is a citizen. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Recruit to Deny, is now available for pre-sale from Indolent Books and will be published this quarter. Shutt is the author of Memos from the 20th 21st Century (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and animal magnetism (Yavanika Press 2024). Her poems have appeared in Anthropocene, Paper Dragon, Sonic Boom, Door is a Jar, Dodging the Rain, Book of Matches, and Split Lip Magazine, among others. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she worked in Hollywood for 30 years as an executive, marketing features and documentaries.
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.
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.
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Sarah Van Arsdale January 20, 2025, Noon
I had expected the ground would quiver then tremble and quake, the cobblestones in my street splitting, revealing hell beneath my feet.
It was the hour the world would change. But I walked to the mercado and passed the big brown dog, sleeping fatly as always in the shade. Carajillo, he’s called by the shopkeepers who keep him fed.
I passed the notices for the lucha libre pasted to lamp posts, garish, tempting. I passed the new café, and then the old one, the whole street perfumed with the scent of tortillas and bleach.
I had expected the wall that runs along the garden— built of enormous green stones that in the rain are shot through with juniper and sage, moss and parakeet— to crack, collapse, concede.
I had expected the Virgin of Soledad would cry out in an animal voice like a coyote bereft, her offspring lost.
This country is not my country, and my country is not my country.
It was the hour of a new, unfathomable era and still the man who sells water called in the next street, agua, agua. I heard my neighbor’s loom thudding wood on wood, and the blue heaven, pacific, wordless, tented still over Oaxaca.
Sarah Van Arsdale 20 de enero, 2025, mediodía
Había esperado que el suelo temblara, luego se agitara y se sacudiera, los guijarros en mi calle se agrietan revelando el infierno bajo mis pies.
Era la hora en que el mundo cambiaría.
Pero caminé hasta el mercado, Y me encontré con el gran perro marrón, Que dormía gordito como siempre en la sombra Carajillo, lo llaman Los comerciantes que lo alimentan.
Pasé frente a los carteles de lucha libre Pegados en los postes de luz Llamativos, tentadores. Pasé por el nuevo café, Y luego por el viejo, toda la calle Perfumada del aroma a tortillas y lejía.
Había esperado que el muro que recorre el jardín— Construido con enormes piedras Que bajo la lluvia irradian verdes: enebro y salvia, musgo y periquito— Se agrietara, se resquebrajara, se rindiera.
Había esperado que la Virgen de la Soledad gritara con voz animal Como una coyote despojada de la perdida de sus cachorros.
Este país no es mi país, Y mi país no es mi país.
Era la hora de una nueva era insondable y todavía el hombre que vende agua gritaba en la calle de al lado agua, agua. Oía el telar de mi vecino golpeando madera contra madera, y el cielo azul, pacifico, sin palabras, todavía flotaba sobre Oaxaca.
—Translated by Andrea de la Rosa
Watercolor by Sarah Van Arsdale
NOTE: Image does not appear in email but you can view it online here.
Sarah Van Arsdale is the author most recently of the poetry collection Catch and Release (Finishing Line Press, 2024), which is illustrated with her own watercolors. Her first novel, Toward Amnesia (Riverhead Hardcover, 1996) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Van Arsdale teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University. Her current project is a weekly collection of watercolor interpretations of photos from The New York Times. She lives in New York City and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Andrea de la Rosa is a writer from Puebla, Mexico who lives in the state of Oaxaca. She currently works as a Spanish teacher for foreigners.
Andrea de la Rosa es una escritora Poblana que radica en el estado de Oaxaca. Actualmente trabaja como profesora de español para extranjeros.
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.
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.
