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

Gretchen Burch
We Sit at the Banquet

The chef insists on white linen for Spaghetti-Os tonight
The chef says before we eat, he wants us to know
he made everything himself

The chef brings out finger bowls, salad forks, fish knives
The chef wears velvet trousers and a tricorn hat

The chef has ironed the white starched napkins
The chef tells us to admire his white stitched monogram
The chef says there’s just one more thing before we eat 

and that is to look up and notice the beautiful
shards of crystal on the beautiful gaslit chandeliers 
he ordered taken out of storage

The chef has fired the sous chefs and consulted with the executioner

The chef just remembered another touch, something to 
give this night an even greater atmosphere of elegance

The chef moves our tables to the turgid brown river outside
The chef laughs from the bank as we board tipping gondolas

The chef forbids life jackets — they are for the weak —
The chef brings out white plates sliding with piles of caviar 

There is hushed talk it might be raccoon feces, teeming 
with black seeds and roundworms
but there is also doubt

The chef assures us we will enjoy the entertainment 
The chef bites the head off a live bat
The chef puts his fingers in a baby
The chef pours kerosene into the water and lights a match for ambiance

The chef insists over the screaming ochre blaze —
We must thank him for this food which we are about to receive.

Gretchen Burch is an emerging poet who lives in rural Kansas and works as a copywriter and content strategist. In 2024 she was named Poet of the Year by the Kansas Authors Club.

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 Barry-Schulz
Defending Extremism and the Federal Government

          An erasure from the administration’s executive order “Defending Women       
          from Gender Ideology and Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the
          Federal Government’, issued January 20, 2025.

It is hereby ordered: across the country

deny the reality of women

eradicate reality

as women
for women
from women
to women

erasure
of truth

relacing the
internal, fluid and subjective sense of self
cherished freedom

Accordingly enforce

Sex shall refer
Woman shall mean
Men shall mean
Female means
Male means

There is a vast spectrum that cannot be recognized

enforce
remove
require
report
cease

take all necessary steps

to end.

Susan Barry-Schulz‘s poems have appeared in West Trestle Review, The Westchester Review, SoFLoPoJO, SWWIM, Does It Have Pockets, and other journals and anthologiees. She is a first generation Estonian-American poet and artist who grew up just outside of Buffalo, NY.

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
Elegy for Long Island Ducks                                             

Say a prayer
for the 99,000 ducks
who will be

killed today to stop
the spread of avian flu
at the last duck farm.

Does it matter to the bird
if she’s killed to be smothered
in an apricot sauce

revered at the table
or in this mass execution
to halt a disease?

Is there a god for ducks
in a universe
without a god for us?

I hope they will be gathered
into feathery wings. So many
for their heaven to take in.

Laurel Brett is the author of the novel The Schrödinger Girl (Kaylie Jones Books, 2020) and the academic book Disquiet on the Western Front: World War II and Postmodern Fiction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). She holds a doctorate in English from SUNY Stony Brook and taught English, Intellectual History, and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College. Brett lives in Port Jefferson, 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.

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.