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.

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.