Lynn Schmeidler
After Blaming DEI for the DC Plane Crash, Trump Explains

It just could have been.
We have a high standard.
We’ve had a much higher standard than anybody else.

And there are things where you have to go by
brainpower. You have to go by psychological quality,
and psychological quality is a very important element of it.

These are various, very powerful tests that we put to use.
So we don’t know. And, we’ll see. We’re going to see.
Because I have common sense.

I would not hesitate to fly.
We’ve already hired some of the people that you already hired
for that position long before we knew about this.

I mean, long before, from the time I came in,
we started going out and getting the best people because I said
“It’s not appropriate what they’re doing.”

I think it’s a tremendous mistake.
They like to do things, and they like to take them too far.
And this is sometimes what ends up happening.

Frank G. Karioris
To Celebrate Life Together

What holidays do magpies celebrate for they must have
their own not only because they do not celebrate ours but
because all creatures need to know the days maybe it is the
first day of autumn when the smell of grass is replaced by that of
the leaves beginning to fall or maybe it is the day when the
brush freezes through the afternoon for the first time or when a
new bud emerges from under the past year’s detritus & brings back
new colors to the landscape or maybe they celebrate holidays
every time a member of their tiding passes away or do they
celebrate every day as a holiday unto its own recognizing that

a day alive is enough of a reason to become a holiday
I don’t know what days the magpies celebrate as their holidays
all I know is that I wish to celebrate with them as I wish to celebrate
with all those around me to hold in the wishes of a moment shared
with love whether it is a holiday of joy or struggle or mourning
we should be there together the magpies are our neighbors
& I wish them to join in our holidays with us to sit at our table
& share in a feast to cry with us for those who are gone to
scream passionately of the struggles of life to embrace the joy
together & hold the sky with stars & fireworks & rain & tears

I will invite them tomorrow to join me in a new holiday we
create a day of simply being alive a holiday of seeing family
in the branches of trees & in the wind’s warming voice I hope
they will join as I hope all the others all who surround us will.

Frank G. Karioris‘s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Collective Unrest, Riverstone, Sooth Swarm Journal, as well as in the zine Eco-Justice for All!, a project initiated by Poet Laureate of Allegheny County Celeste Gainey. An educator based in Philadelphia, they were a W.S. Merwin Fellow at the Community of Writers 2023 Poetry Program in Olympic Valley, California.

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.

Heidi Seaborn
On the Steps of the Lincoln Memorial

God damn the beauty of it all    the white wedding cake buildings lit like sky lanterns
or a seduction of candles surrounding a bubble bath     god damn the DC bubble
for drinking champagne at embassy parties for wearing charcoal suits with snappy club ties
& crimson evening gowns with hair sprayed into a helmet    god damn
the helmets & barbed wire & check points   god-damn the checks that fail
to arrive for rent or the baby’s formula or schoolbooks that are banned
even when we band together   march to the steps of the god-damned congress
with all its god damn steps to get anything done so much god damn waiting
waiting with eyes on the prize for an impossible implausible dream
god damn the dreamers damned at birth
god damn their parents on knees to wash the floors of the Senate  god damn the Senators
consumed with their own hunger for power the god damn consuming hunger that growls
on street corners   god damn our broken streets & bridges
our broken trust   in god we shall trust on our shrinking currency  god damn
the dark money the darker elements that work in the shadows of the white tower
with its ring of flags   god damn the flag for flying into the hands
of insurrectionists & autocrats   god damn the sticky hands the filthy hands the hands in the pockets the hands in the money jar the no-hand-out hands the Supreme hands on our bodies god damn the handguns & the assault rifles & the assault
on who we love  how we live & if we can elect our representatives our rulers
who come to this god damned beautiful city bathed in expectations
only to be seduced by the god damn bubble of it all
the babble of politicians   the rubble of our damned democracy
so god damn troubled   this America.

Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Editors Prize in Poetry. Her third book of poetry, Tic Tic Tic, is forthcoming in 2025 from Cornerstone Press. Heidi is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Financial Times, Image, Poetry Northwest, Terrain.org, The Slowdown and elsewhere. Heidi holds degrees from Stanford and NYU.

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.

Catherine Gonick
Learning to See through Atheist Eyes

Senator McCarthy was on TV, and my father wore
his Adlai Stevenson shoe-with-a-hole-in-it pin.
In another must-watch show, Elizabeth wore ermine
and white satin to be crowned Queen of England.

I saw that one with my mother, who bought
me my own white-satin, pearl-studded dress
to make First Communion. Elizabeth felt blessed
by God, believed in her divine responsibility to serve.
Jesus belonged to my father’s tribe, so wasn’t really
God, but I swallowed him anyway.

Later, someone stuck under God into the Pledge
of Allegiance. Like my parents, I disapproved.
When my 4th-grade class reached those words,
I chose to remain silent. It was worse for Uncle Louis
who had to hide out for a while at Clear Lake.
He never became a citizen, and if he answered
the government’s subpoena, might be deported.
All the way back to Russia where he started.

After Confirmation, I stopped going to church.
Uncle Louis was never found out, and now,
as the latest wave of banishing gets under way,
Clear Lake’s blue-green algae has grown
so plentiful it can be seen from outer space.

Catherine Gonick‘s poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Forge, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Pedestal, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, Support Ukraine, and Rumors, Secrets & Lies: Poems About Pregnancy, Abortion and Choice. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming in 2025 from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Gonick lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works with her husband on projects aiming to slow the rate of global warming.

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.

J. Gay
First Body — Woman Hitchhiking

(From a series of poems written from points of view characters in a slasher movie)

He ripened me in the hot, humid dark
before putting me out to violent rest by the cane field.
My body peeling off into the dirt and blades
of grass cutting through me.
Blast of early summer heat.
Thick stink of old sweat.

He wants my rot to find her.
He wants her ruby-throated
horror high-keening, all perfume and matte finish skin.

(The news will talk about a body found.
Just parts—kneecaps, thumbs, teeth—
and it’ll be panic for all those Whole People.)

But she, even in the opening scene, knows
bodies are just piecemeal bullshit.

She lies down next to me during this dream of day,
her fingers stroking the slick grease of my hair,
and waits for the police to come.

J. Gay lives in Maine and writes while watching animals venture out of the marsh by her house. Her chapbook Decomposition can be found at Dancing Girl 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 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.

David P. Miller
Against Being Stupefied

The morning glories’ quick life—
force sparked their tendrils
in a new direction, this late summer’s
overripening days. Risen from
the second-floor porch pot—twisted
through the wind-spinner’s stalled blades—
self-hoisted into the low branches
of our Evodia tree. Now, the Evodia’s
ornamented two ways at once: twined
purple blossoms, clusters of maroon fruit.

A small red-headed girl—three years?—
adventures around the block
with her mother, one hand holding
a stuffed white rabbit, shopping bag
across her other wrist. New ones to me,
these two, this second of September.
At the corner, daughter hesitates,
mother points their next way.
My story for them: It’s their first new—
neighborhood walk-around, the girl
learning to propel herself on the sidewalk.

Indoors, behind the curdled pixels,
contenders ridicule human worth as always,
as arenas-full of hands stretch to heaven.
On repeat: others’ depth of skin tone—
the turns and curves of vowels and consonants—
the topographies of their faces, versus a sea
of flagstaffs, high-relief triceps, and the star
speaker’s index finger poised to fire.

Next corner up-street, the morning’s black cat
paces to the No Parking Sign, pauses to lie
on the pavement, gets up and paces
as the expected man arrives to unlock
and raise the grate of the turquoise bodega
with sea-green steps. A lone end-season
cottonwood seed floats past a mourning dove
on a wire. The grate gaps just enough for the cat,
bounding straight upstairs to Las Villas Market
beneath the metal’s corrugated rattle.

David P. Miller is the author of Bend in the Stair (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and  Sprawled Asleep (Nixes Mate Books, 2019). His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, What Rough Beast, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among 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.

Henry Israeli
The Ceremony of Innocence

We walked home through a field where
an oil rig and a family of deer compete
for resources. From the winds of attrition
fell the first flakes of a nuclear winter
in a child’s memory of the 1970s.
Lying in the grass, staring at the sky,
watching clouds tell fantastic lies—
that was heaven in a child’s eyes.
In those days, we could still feel the earth
rotating and spinning beneath us.
Now the deer wander empty streets
and we hole up inside our homes
with shades closed, our children watching
the great summer fires on black screens.
Sleep well, children, don’t worry if
the barbed wire meant to protect you
also snags the most beautiful songbirds.

Henry Israeli is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Our Age of Anxiety (White Pine Poetry Prize, 2019), and god’s breath hovering across the waters, (Four Way Books, 2016), and as editor, Lords of Misrule: 20 Years of Saturnalia Books (Saturnalia, 2022). He is also the translator of three critically acclaimed books by Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Plume, and The Harvard Review, as well as several anthologies including Best American Poetry. Henry Israeli is also the founder and editor of Saturnalia Books, and teaches in the English & Philosophy Department of Drexel 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.

Kathryn D. Temple
Rising

I am waiting for high tide
the dock under water, one bird against a blue sky

a mission, take the straight line home
to put the trash on the curb, it’s an ordinary Sunday
without benediction

a crow peers in the window, turns to talk to another,
a black feather floats, sails on a rising current,

I hear the cricket in the basement, chirrup,
and the water is rising

Kathryn D. Temple is an English professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in Streetlight, Metaworker, The Examined Life, Delmarva Review, and 3Elements, among others. She is the author of two academic books on law and emotions and many academic journal articles.

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.

Irene Cooper
but who now will deliver the weather report

david lynch said it’s a great time to be
alive if you love the theatre of the absurd
for seven straight years at two thirty pm
he ordered a cup a coffee
and a chocolate shake at bob’s big boy
whose three dimensional logo sported
a similar bouffant to lynch’s own
in an interview on a pbs talk show
with a disgraced host lynch talked
about routine, how a regular dinner
of broccoli and chicken gave his imagination
a foundation to create
i read a story in which lynch met a kid
on his girlfriend’s front lawn
whose father was a professional artist
and that was that, once he understood
that one could choose, he never looked back
today I imagined that i could live
a life without undue attention to capitalism
i’d just collect my check, pay my taxes
and that would be that
i’d live an unironic life, loving the bluebird
and the pie, a cup of coffee and a cigarette
this being a free country
this being a free country

Irene Cooper wrote the feminist noir novel Found; Committal, poet-friendly spy-fy about family; spare change:poems, finalist for the 2022 Stafford/Hall award; and even my dreams are over the constant state of anxiety: poems. Writings appear in Beloit Poetry, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, Witness, Bear Review, and elsewhere. Irene works and lives with her people and Roxy in the middle of Oregon.

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.

Dion O’Reilly
Thinning of the Veil

5 November 2024, Bellingham WA

I love how quiet
the town, how mute
from low-pressed clouds,
the seep of rain.

I want an animal
coat to keep me
warm, to skirt shadow
by the waterfront, slow

barges creeping like
slugs on stainless water.

I want coverlet clouds
to lift for a second,
the slow sun hurting
my worm-white skin.

Now is the time
for the line between
dead and suffering
to shimmer and deplete,

for a million imperatives
to speak in the stripped-down trees:

Listen. Look. Drink. Take.

Some hate the darkness
when it o’ersways,
when it enters
our kingdom like liquor

from forgotten bottles,
the singing and stinging,
rush, at dusk—
a cauldron

of flying things
stirred and thrown
into the darkening sky.

Dion O’Reilly is the author of three poetry collections: Sadness of the Apex Predator, a finalist for the Steel Toe Book Prize and the Ex Ophidia Prize; Ghost Dogs, winner of The Independent Press Award for Poetry, Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Poetry Award, and runner-up for the Catamaran Poetry Prize. Her third book, Limerence, was a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition and is forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in Cincinnati Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Sun, and Rattle. She is a podcaster, leads poetry workshops, and is starting a new poetry journal about alterity. She splits her time between a ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains and a residence in Bellingham, Washington.

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.