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.

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

Susana H. Case
Thief

At M’s place, we three ended up naked on coke,
she fellating him on her living room
floor. Not interested in right-wing people
that way—though back then it was still
possible to have some as casual friends—I grabbed
my camera, knowing he aspired to political
office and shouldn’t even be a janitor
who cleaned one. Great idea—blackmail!
It doesn’t matter anymore. He never was

a candidate, is dead now, from too much booze
and drugs. She cleaned up, became a Democrat
when her money ran low. I still have
those photos somewhere. Can you steal a soul

by taking photos, every reflection an outward
projection? The photographer James W. Bailey,
with his burnt, torn, and scratched scars
on his images, thought so, didn’t want souls
wandering about, angry at him, didn’t want
to steal souls even from the dead, a question
of morality. Ah morality—sex scandals no longer
keep anyone out of politics. But I’ve been a thief,

and somewhere in a closet I have souls in a box.

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), an Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, as well as a Finalist for the American Book Fest Awards and the International Book Awards. Her first of five chapbooks, The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press, 2002), was released in an English-Polish edition as Kawiarnia Szkocka (Opole University Press, 2010) and in an English-Ukrainian edition as Шотландська Кав’ярня (Slapering Hol Press, 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.

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

Ted Millar
Constitutional Crisis

My son and father are enjoying their time together
bass fishing over there. By the time I return from this traipse
among the pines they’ll still be angling for something
to make our trip to the Adirondacks worthwhile.
It’s moments like this I’m glad I always carry reading material.
I bet I’m the only person you know
walks around with a pocket Constitution.

I start with the Bill of Rights.
I’m through all twenty-seven amendments before I look
up again to see me son has snagged a couple
little shallow dwellers and is chasing a frog.
I figure I might then be able to get through the first
two articles by the time they’re ready to call it quits,
but I’m onto the judicial branch’s responsibilities
delineated in Article three, then four and five,
and still nothing resembling a capitulation to uncaught fish.
By the time it’s getting too dark to continue expecting
to catch anything, I’ve finished Article seven
where the framers supplied their John Hancocks.

I peer up through the fog settling around us
at a “Trump WON!” flag snapping on a cabin porch,
and I’m chilly, unprotected all of a sudden against the elements.

Ted Millar‘s poetry, essays, and flash fiction have appeared in journals including ephemera, A Sufferer’s Digest, Middle West Press, redrosethorns, and 365 Tomorrows, among others. He lives in the Hudson Valley and teaches high school English.

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

Sean Sutherland
After the Election

I keep thinking of a time in the countryside at a
friend’s cottage. Exotic flowers waited for us
each morning. We warbled along to songs from
the 30s on an old record player. There was even
a room where you first had to make a bird call
if you found yourself there, when the eight of us
made the inventions of the others more lavish.
What I left to be in that house felt eclipsed
by a word from a lost culture defined as people
up late who speak from the summits of their hearts.
So that one night my friend and I formed
a vague notion we are part alien, with a
nostalgia for some other more serene world.
In a slender child’s bed like mine, in a husky
conspiratorial voice, he whispered after 1am
that the major American river we both know well
as a majestic animal of burden, in its nocturnal
luster of barge light, has another river just as wide
and many miles long which runs deep below its
every curve, but fast in the opposite direction.
In wonder, larger spaces grew between our words
as sleep came on the deep river surfaced.
I could hear the roar of that river as possibility,
and if in the morning pancakes, coffee and laughter
walked up those stairs to wake us, we could
forget that river as if it were a dream, or let it
sweep us along into anything we imagined.

Sean Sutherland‘s poems have appeared in journals including Atlanta Review, The Florida Review, Sandhills Literary Magazine, Hypertext, and Lime Hawk, among others, as well as in anthologies including Poetry for the Actor: A Guide to Deeper Truth (Smith & Kraus, 2020) edited by Deborah Hedwall. His plays have been produced at alternative theatre spaces in New York including Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE Arts Center, and Altered Stages. A MacDowell Colony Fellow, Sutherland studies and teaches at The Writers Studio in 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

Emanuel Xavier
Here We Will Stay

We were never meant to belong,
pero aquí estamos—
brown hands, queer hearts,
ghosts of ancestors whispering from las esquinas
where our names have been erased.

Another wall, another ban,
another law written in white ink
with the blood of those
who were never meant to matter.

Our grandparents’ tongues
stumble on the lips of children,
but still, they dream,
despite the cages, despite the bullets,
despite gods who never listen.

And when they scream, Go back!
dime, ¿back a dónde?
Al Bronx, a El Paso, a San Juan,
to a map that never claimed us
but never let us go.

They hold la biblia
like a blade,
like a border, like a brand.
God, but only theirs,
To justify el odio.

Still, we remain,
glitter on our faces,
con uñas pintadas,
con tattoos y resistencia.

They cannot silence us,
because we have learned
to carve poetry from el silencio,
to turn our broken Spanglish
into a weapon
más fuerte que su miedo.

We are still here.
Y aquí nos quedaremos.

Emanuel Xavier is the author of seven poetry collections. His most recent, Love(ly) Child (Rebel Satori Press, 2023) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry and was awarded the Silver Medal in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category at the International Latino Book Awards. Xavier’s cult novel Christ Like (originally published by Painted Leaf Press in 1999 and reissued by Rebel Satori Press on its Queer Mojo imprint in 2009) was groundbreaking in its portrayal of a young gay Latino’s immersion in the downtown club scene of the 1990s. He has edited several poetry anthologies, including Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press, 2008). His poems have appeared in numerous journals, as well as in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, Edited by Rigoberto González. Xavier serves on the Board of The Publishing Triangle and is currently working on a memoir and a screenplay based on Christ Like. His honors include the Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award, a New York City Council Citation, and a Gay City News Impact Award.

[The poet provided a considerably more concise and modest bio; I expanded it. —Ed.]

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

Patricia Q. Bidar
Red

These are days when every action carries a shadow idea: how much can anything matter with the breath of the minute hand nudging permanent midnight?

I learn that Pentecost is sometimes known as the birthday of the church. Pentecost Sunday marks the presence of the Holy Spirit with the earliest Christians as they gathered after Jesus’ death. Fifty days after Easter. (“He is risen!”)

My knowledge of these things is spotty. But I love Jesus as a friend. The Jesus Christ Superstar Jesus. Jesus of the gospels, bountiful hang time with misfits. That flowing Dan Fogelberg hair. That Jesus is just all right with me.

“Cleanliness is Next to Godliness” was curlicued on a little placard in my grandparents’ bathroom. Trying to make sense of it, I decided my grandmother had misspelled both “Kleenex” and “Garbage.”

OTOH, “I believe in the golden rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules” was stenciled on a sign in our grandfather’s home bar. There was also an oil painting of a sexy woman toreador in only stiletto heels, brandishing a pair of red panties at a huffing bull. He told us our grandmother was the model. Another time, he said he himself was the model for the profile on the head of the American dime.

Behind the bar as our parents and grandparents played poker in the next room, my sister and I would loll, eating maraschino cherries and ruining bright paper drink parasols to inspect the tiny strips of Chinese newspaper inside.

So, no religious upbringing. And I learned today “we” mark Pentecost Sunday with the color red. See, on that first Pentecost Sunday, people were on fire with the Spirit, loving and praising God.

Red is the color of exposed skin, strange words issuing forth, the believers gleefully rowing, posing on precipices, or dancing badly under the trees. I see snakes dangling down, hissing out sales pitches to sunburnt ears.

And yet the signs of nature are here for us to see, and smell. Hear. The sunny wash of Matilija poppies. Trill of birdsong. Clouds drifting across powdery skies. The jacaranda’s canopy, nearly bare in the weeks before its heavenly blooms.

Patricia Q. Bidar is the author of the novelette Wild Plums (ELJ Editions, 2024) and the short story collection Pardon Me For Moonwalking (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming). Her short works have appeared in Waxwing, Wigleaf, Smokelong Quarterly, The Pinch, and Atticus Review, among other journals, as well as in several anthologies. A Los Angeles native, Bidar lives with her family and unusual dog outside of Oakland, CA.

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

Linda Hillman Chayes
Election Lament

          after Larry Levis

Soon, without exception, everyone
will be carved from stone.
The fountains in the courtyards and airports will run
                               dry & bone & airless,

Elephants in the room & lion-tamers in cages.
O composer for clown horns,
Laureate of the run-on verse, you
might suppose this is written about you…

If not, who? Women who wait in doorless waiting rooms?
Burning men who fight with foam under the Thunderdome?

Goodbye, little country.
Goodbye, neighborhoods of tolerance, bicyclists pedaling
from one end of town to the other
skirting mildew, shadow,
the bleak of sirens.

You can see that I am spinning
signals in spent bursts,
                               much like, as I peck my way
forward, the birdsong of someone
too tired to sleep as the bicycle horns bleep and bleep.

I beg your pardon, but did we not shout through a bullhorn
as if our lives depended on it?

And this cotton-candy truth on which we string our belief
less and less, at the hands of a jester.

For no reason and because
I can find no other compelling question, does everything we hold dear
even as a flag of spun sugar,
dissolve?
Devoured. By mouth

Linda Hillman Chayes is the author of the poetry chapbooks Not My First Walk on the Moon (2024) and The Lapse (2014), both from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in journals including Kestrel, American Poetry Journal, Bracken, Quartet, Westchester Review, 2 Horatio, and others. With Therese Rosenblatt, she co-edited The Voice of the Analyst: Narratives in Developing a Psychoanalytic Identity (Routledge, 2017). She holds a PhD in clinical psychology from City College of the City University of New York and is a practicing psychologist and psychoanalyst.

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.