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.

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

Scarlet Envy
Queens Walking

Clicking in the dessert like scorpions
Echoed clacking turns the tide
Saturation to the brim
Powder pulsating across
Constellations like blood
Lubed up under armor
Queens walking and riding
Unicorns with bows and arrows piercing
Chandelier earrings and ballroom
Conversations you can’t hear because the
Band is on
Slow motion into battle with flags
In your embarrassing unfinished seams
Silken unravellings falling with ease
Unease emotionally
Cutting hems and creases and lines
Weapons in painted sticky fingers
Trademarked cat eye for an eye
Shadow asked for my hand
In an arranged marriage
Bursting like rotten fruit against the screen
Making preserves with spoiled potential
Who waters this desert orchard?
Growing superstars on the vine
Peeling off the walls like ghosts
Naturally with no filters for
Saloon girl attitudes and vanity lights
Fighting fashionably for life and past life
Sound stages free of sound and sand
And tumbleweeds
How is there water here much less
Ice cream in the drain
Smile in the wind, the tide continues to rotate
Take your face off now
For the harvest
Waltz worked again
A new batch of hot stars crispy with new light
Fresh from the desert orchard
Dancing with ghosts and rare horses
Be careful, the curling iron is still on

Scarlet Envy is the author of the chapbook Scarlet Envy: She’s a Poet (Indolent Books, 2024). Her 2024 cabaret show Bad Advice was nominated for BroadwayWorld Awards in four categories. Scarlet’s television appearances include RuPaul’s Drag Race (season 11), RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (season 6), RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. the World (series 2), iCarly (2023), The Weakest Link (2022), The Carrie Diaries (2015), and Saturday Night Live (2017), as well as a lead role in the short film Only Worn Once (2023). Scarlet holds undergraduate degrees in advertising design and communications from Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Her full-length poetry debut, Am I the Drama?, is forthcoming from Indolent Books.

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

Jan Santora-Farrar
Agency

The tyrant todler
with juvenile visions of ruling the world
weaponizing freedom
raging fuming preening
wielding bullets of projection
aimed always outward
targeting the Other

Which is true

While also
Are we projectors
and he the manifest
of our own hidden wounded
stifled parts
unloved shadow babies
we think we can’t stand the pain
of loving into wholeness
Disarming the tyrant toddler within
And so with out

Jan Santora-Farrar is a reader for Bone to Brain, a literary journal started by practitioners of brainspotting, a psychotherapeutic technique for processing traumatic memories. With Pamela A. Hays she co-authored the article “Coping Outside Traditional Roles: The Case of Noncustodial Mothers and Implications for Therapy” in the journal Women & Therapy. Santora-Farrar holds a BA in women’s studies from the University of Washington and an MA in clinical mental health counseling from Antioch University. She lives and works in Snohomish County, Washington, where she specializes in treating narcissistic trauma and chronic loss.

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

Marilyn Johnston
The Burner’s Still On

For months, in the pressure cooker
of the election, we finally emerged,
battered and beaten—a dicey grilling
by right-wing neighbors, left us
marinating for weeks about what
had happened, as we measured
and minced our words to pare down
where things went wrong. That first
day, deeply-fried, we’d scooped up
our passports, whipped ourselves
into a frenzy, and headed toward the
Canadian Border, sure that we’d be
folded into a long line of Americans,
straining to cross. But everything has
its season, and in the days to follow,
cooler heads percolated, our steps
trimmed, our questions reduced to:
How can we leave America?
So we turned around, even if it meant
sifting through the rubbish, all while
we strained and searched for reason,
even if we’re left simmering in our
own remorseful stew of regret. And
I’m at my kitchen window, now—
still scalded, chopped and grizzled.
Hungry for all they might try to feed
us that we’ll never swallow.

Marilyn Johnston is the author of the poetry collections Red Dust Rising (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press, 2004) and Before Igniting (Rippling Brook Press, 2020). She has received fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, and she was the winner of the Donna J. Stone National Literary Award for Poetry, a Robert Penn Warren writing competition prize, and the Salmon Creek Flash Fiction Contest. Also a filmmaker, Johnston teaches creative writing in the Oregon Artists in the Schools Program, working primarily with incarcerated youth.

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

Cammy Thomas
Stink

I smell something
like burning rubber with sugar,
very strong but coming from where?
Something chemical, something
poisonous but maybe not there.
Am I dreaming dread?

I get up, look under the bed.

The hot chemical stink
pierces my nose
but all is still and quiet, just dust.
In the yard, I smell burning,
but see no fires,
just black sky, hot stars.
Walk through my empty house,
moon stripes the floor,
faint sounds of water,
dishwasher cycling.

I sniff its latch but nothing.

Metallic ozone—
the stove is cold,
the world silent,
this smell permeating me,
war smell, waste smell,
petroleum sugar.

Cammy Thomas’s most recent book is Odysseus’ Daughter (Parkman Press, 2023) poems written in response to the Odyssey. Three previous poetry collections were published by Four Way Books—Cathedral of Wish, recipient of the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; Tremors, which received 2022 Poetry Honors from the Mass Book Awards; and Inscriptions, funded in part by a fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation. Poems have appeared recently in Naugatuck River Review, Hampden Sydney Review, Smartish Pace, and The Ilanot Review. A resident of the Boston area, Thomas teaches literature to adults.

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.

Lou Orfanella
Why Some Get 100 Years While Most of Us Don’t, or Why 78 Plus 4 Will Never Equal 100

It started an hour before daylight
The life well lived
The lessons well taught

My eyes well up watching the
Memorial services and funeral of
James Earl Carter, Jimmy, 39th president
This was a man who admitted to lusting in his heart
But who was never seduced
By power or glamour or the spotlight

I’ve never seen the scorebook of the
Great beyond but I imagine
That you get so many points for each
Sunday school lesson taught
Then so many more for each
Habitat for Humanity nail hammered into place

The oval office was never his natural environment
Much preferring a front porch in the Georgia sunset,
Happy being the best-known peanut farmer
This side of fellow southerner
North Carolina’s Jim Catfish Hunter,
While earning his hundred years a day at a time

Lou Orfanella is the author of the poetry collections Radical Acceptance and Unexpected Guests among many other books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His essays, columns, reviews, and poems have appeared in periodicals including The New York Daily News, College Bound, English Journal, World Hunger Year Magazine, Discoveries, Teacher Magazine, and New York Teacher. He holds degrees from Columbia University and Fordham University.

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 presidential administration. 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.

Subscribe to get each day’s poem by email.

Chad Parenteau
#ReleaseTheTrumpCut

Heed our hashtag warriors
brandishing their armchairs.

Restore the Trump Universe.
Recover the one true continuity.

Start with the missing footage
of everyone at inauguration.

Cut the whole Russia thing. Went
nowhere, got in narrative’s way.

Use CGI, right side up Bible,
lip-synch intended victory speech.

Ashli Babbitt is a misused character.
Give her a hero moment pre-death.

Shoot new scenes of Hillary in court,
her shaved-head deposition on Obama.

Insert QAnon Shaman as judge
presiding over every trial and

execution of Pedocrats, who are
replaced with reptilian replicas.

Create a new insurrection to battle,
a deeper state summer blockbuster.

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 anthologies including  French Connections, Sounds of Wind, Reimagine America, and The Vagabond Lunar Collection. He serves as associate editor of the journal Oddball Magazine; is 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 presidential administration. 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.

Subscribe to get each day’s poem by email.

Richard Jeffrey Newman is the author of T’shuvah (Fernwood Press, 2023), Words for What Those Men Have Done (Guernica Editions, 2017) and The Silence of Men (CavanKerry Press, 2006), as well as three books of translation from classical Persian poetry, Selections from Saadi’s Gulistan; Selections from Saadi’s Bustan (Global Scholarly Publications, 2004 & 2006); and The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahameh (Junction Press, 2011). He curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Jackson Heights, and is a professor of English and creative Writing at SUNY’s Nassau Community College.

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 presidential administration. 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.

Subscribe to get each day’s poem by email.

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

Julene T. Weaver
Pick Your Battle

We don’t have to agree.
We live in a fabricated world:
people who don’t believe
the Holocaust happened,
or think the world is flat,
men who want to rule women.

This is not my world, I walk away.
Such deep falsity will not change
from anything I say, the wall of fabrication
is strong. But our truth is strong.
We’re drifting apart—families separated,
nations at odds, at war. It’s exhausting.

I live in my world, some say, a bubble,
but I call it life. We exist in pockets of belief—
do not give attention or clout.
The internet has spawned alternate worlds,
how they found each other,
the media has given them voice.

We carry the weight of knowing
how bad it is—but we have power.
We are survivors. Be prepared to ignore.
Be prepared not to give credit or voice.
not to buy their products. Hold Active
Hope for the planet, to find solutions.

We’ve years to stop fascism
to stand up together, vote,
take notice of the nine hundred
page Mandate for Leadership:
The Conservative Mandate Project 2025
shows us our enemy and task.

More positive bills for voters
have passed then restrictions.
There is good news to follow—bad news
brings us down—good news picks us up.
The young are doing work for the future—
their lives depend on it.
The issues make it personal.

Take small steps—one issue—
mine has been AIDS, healthcare,
death with dignity, gay rights,
social security, Medicare,
My partner’s was stopping nuclear
destruction of our planet.
The issues are not separate.

Pick your battle. Pick one.
We must make our world safe
for women and children—
whether in the military, in a bar,
or a refugee camp. Housing. We see
what’s wrong. We must stay strong.

Julene Tripp Weaver‘s fourth poetry collection, Slow Now with Clear Skies, was published by MoonPath Press. Her prior collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, won the Bisexual Book Award, four Human Relations Indie Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her work is widely published in journals and anthologies. She was a fellow in the Jack Straw Writing Program (2023). Julene lives in Seattle, where she had a long and fruitful career as a psychotherapist.

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 presidential administration. 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.

Subscribe to get each day’s poem by email.

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

Sarah Sarai
Auguration

History is not a bell curve.
Spirit accumulates.
Even when we are over,
Energy will not die.
Ask Einstein who wears
Hair evasive of eternal
Swords of injustice.
As if preparing for truth.
Which travels with much
Baggage and few handlers.

Sarah Sarai is the author of the poetry collections Bright-Eyed (Poets Wear Prada, 2024), That Strapless Bra in Heaven (Kelsay Books, 2019), Geographies of Soul and Taffeta (Indolent Books, 2016), Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Face (Dusie Kollektiv, 2013), and The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, MER, BigCityLit, New York Quarterly, Spinozablue, Sinister Wisdom, 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 presidential administration. 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.

Subscribe to get each day’s poem by email.

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