Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Lou Orfanella
Back in the USSR

Where have you gone King Richard?
Your ill-advised surreptitious reel-to-reel recordings
Were at least kept under lock and key
Until there was no damage left to be done
Never did you publicly malign a foreign leader
Or throw one to the curb like a lover scorned
You continued to seek “peace with honor” abroad
While sinking amid chaos on the home front
And you stepped aside rather than
Attempting to masquerade as a president
While striving for a dictator’s throne

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. (And as his college floor mate, I can attest that he is an inveterate Beatles fan. —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.

Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Tree Smith Benedikt
I Will Invite President Zelenskyy to Shabbat Dinner

I will put out the antique silver,
and hope I can find a tablecloth without any stains,
I will bring up from the basement the good china.

I will give him a seat of honor at our table,
which will be laden with sympathy and food.

We will light the candles in honor of the children stolen by Putin.
We will break the bread and drink of the vine
while democracy falls around us.

In between bites of food, I will pray the Mi Shebeirach
for the healing of his people and of my broken heart.
We will not talk of the past,
but maybe, instead, read poems out loud
as a bulwark against the coming storm.

Tree Smith Benedikt‘s poems have appeared in journals including Glacial Hills Review, Ritualwell, and Jewish Literary Journal, as well as in the anthology Proof of Life: An Exploration of Conflict, Survival, and the Human Spirit Post October 7th (OneFamily Fund, 2024). She is the founder of Jewish Poets Collective and the Elul Poetry Reading Challenge, and lives with her family in Southern Ohio.

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.

Part of a SPECIAL EDITION of several poems over the course of today in solidarity with President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine

Ina Roy-Faderman
In the Room With Death

Three men facing Death.
Only one sees
the scythe and ivory beak and the black feathered wings and the grin
he has seen so many times hovering over
bodies, so many bodies,
as if they all are his,
and in some sense they are.

Shouting won’t scare him away,
someone should tell the second man,
so look Death in the face, in case it comes at you
as a noose or a guillotine,
and hope that your wife was once right,
back when she believed in herself,
that we’ll all be reborn to learn our lessons,
maybe you’ll be a sea star,
learn that you can regrow, though never be the same,
if you’re torn apart
limb from limb from limb from limb
from limb

As for the third,
his time is up.
People who can see it count his time in months, not years,
Even wrapped and mummified in gold, Death will find him.
His hourglass is shattered and its calcaneus grinds into
the shards as it steps nearer and nearer.

Watch me failing my test of goodness,
of moral rectitude:
I hope I can watch when the scythe reaches him.

Ina Roy-Faderman’s work can be found in Pigeon Papers, The Rumpus, Trash Panda, and other journals. A first generation Bengali-American, she was born in Nebraska, lives in northern California with several mammals (some human), and drinks a lot of coffee. She teaches biomedical ethics and humanities philosophy of technology, and serves as a poetry editor for Right Hand Pointing.

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

Please send me poems ASAP about the Oval Office meeting today between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky.

Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

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.

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

Steve Nickman
Waiting for the Dictator

               After Cavafy

Why are the people all looking at their phones?

                    Because they want to know what the dictator will do
                    when he comes a month from now.
                    Four years ago he sent his barbarians
                    to lay waste the Capitol.
                    They were jailed and he had to wait
                     until the new election.
                     When the dictator comes
                     he will release them from prison.

Why isn’t anything happening in the Senate?
Why do the senators sit there and make no laws?

                    Because the dictator is coming next month.
                    What laws can the senators make now?
                    When the dictator comes he will make the laws.

Why are there “Closed” signs
on the government’s doors?
Why is our leader rushing to pardon
officers who followed the laws?
Why are so many people
wearing red hats and red neckties?
And why are foreign presidents
suddenly traveling to Florida?

                    Because the dictator has his own agents who will run the offices.
                    They will accuse the old office-holders of crimes.
                    Red hats and neckties mean allegiance to the dictator.
                    He has threatened our old allies.

And why do our statesmen not speak forthrightly
to the dictator, share their wisdom?

                    Because the dictator is bored by rhetoric,
                    does not believe in wisdom
                    or science or friendship.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
Why are the streets emptying so rapidly?
Why the serious look on the citizens’ faces?

                    Because the dictator has told us what he will do
                    on the first day. They are frightened.
                    He will take away our old protections.
                   We wondered if he would come
                   but now it is certain.

That might be a kind of solution.
Without a dictator
what would become of us?

Steve Nickman is the author of the poetry collection To Sleep with Bears (Wordtech, 2022). His poems have appeared in Pleiades, Nimrod, Summerset Review, Tar River Review, Tule Review, and other journals. Nickman is a psychiatrist who works primarily with children, teenagers, and young adults. He lives in Brookline, Mass.

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

Zahra Axinn
Listen

I hold my focus
as though I were

to thread a needle
so that I might

parse a pattern
or rhythmic melody

from disparate rustles
my gut tells me

to be still so that
I might come to know

more than myself:

beyond the cumulus
way past the satellites

where the skin of the seas
meets expansive air

under the mantle
deep in the magma

within wafts of eucalyptus
or campfire smoke

or steam from wet asphalt
slow as the seasons

an imperceptibly
ever-changing twilight

vast and sprawled as a city
bright and contained as a chime

decadent but not heavy
smooth enough to dissolve

Zahra Axinn is a British-American writer raised in Berkeley, CA. She holds a BA in English and Theater & Performance Studies from Stanford University and a dual-degree MA in Visual and Critical Studies and MFA in Creative Writing at CCA. She currently lives in London.

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

Leslie Morris
The DOGE

Diadems – drop –
And Doges surrender –
Soundless as Dots, 
On a Disc of Snow.
                    —Emily Dickinson

Don’t try to surrender dogecoin for milk —
Your 7/11 won’t take it.

And while a Shiba Inu doge once made you smile
with his telegraphic musings and misplaced modifiers

think now of Faliero, the 14th c Venetian Doge.
In a failed coup, he plotted to replace his fellow oligarchs

with his own absolute rule. The Doge’s severed head
came to rest at the bottom of the marble palace stairs.

(As for the Venetian populani, pfft, said the oligarchs.)

doge, noun: 1. the chief magistrate in the republics of Venice and Genoa.
noun, slang: 2. An intentional misspelling of dog, doge is an Internet meme involving a picture of a Shiba Inu dog captioned with humorously ungrammatical phrases. The word can also refer to a cryptocurrency.
noun, new usage: 3a. Department of Government Efficiency, created by Donald Trump in 2025 to secure coup d’etat. 3b. a white South African male born to wealth who never took a high school American History or U.S. Government class. 3c. a gamer who styles himself after video game warrior heroes but pays others to play for him. 3d. a drug-fueled corporate executive who makes massive lay-offs and is unable, self-admittedly, to feel empathy. 3e. a man who can never admit error; smart but not wise.

Leslie Morris‘s poetry and prose has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, SWWIM Every Day, The Broadkill Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. She lives and works in Austin, Texas.

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

Ron Kolm
Fight to Defend Democracy

We are on the edge
of a very dangerous precipice
and violent gangs of home-grown Fascists,
aided by a very Un-Supreme Court,
are doing their best to push us off the cliff
and into the dark waters raging below.

When you peer over the edge
you can see the wannabe-dictator
doggy paddling around,
hoping we’ll all fall in
so he can devour us.

We must get together
and build a more beautiful country,
fight global warming
and create life-affirming art.

Ron Kolm is the author of the poetry collections A Change in the Weather (Sensitive Skin Books, 2017) and Swimming in the Shallow End (Autonomedia, 2020) as well as the novel Neo Phobe, written with Jim Feast (Unbearable Books/Autonomedia, 2006), the memoir The Bookstore Book (Pink Trees Press, 2023), and a number of short story collections. He is also the editor of several anthologies. His work has appeared in journals including And Then, Gathering of the Tribes, Great Weather for Media, and Maintenant, and others, as well as in the Brownstone Poets anthology 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 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

James Diaz
Everyone Is at War With Themselves

But no two battles are the same
Some say it loudly: do not
Touch my pain
Other’s need all hands on them
At all times
And the inner drowning comes quick
And fierce
It spares no innocence
It breaks the heart down
To a fine and glinting dust
And we must walk through
Certain things alone

But not this
Someone says
In that great circle
Of anonymous rooms
No, certainly not this

Am I still good, God?
I’m asking
For me
And if I’m still asking…

And if you’re still listening…

I put my arms around strangers
Who hold me up
Tonight
And when I speak
Heart comes tumbling out
So much heart and heavy
These years
I burned and broke
And battled myself
To the death
Bone to brain

I know hope
As a raggedy wraith
Drugged and dragged
Through the backends
Of life

Of life,
I think-
There is a death
To be unlearned
Always
Touch this pain or not
Pain is spoken
Pain is heard

Someone cups the flame
Until someone else’s fingers work again

God,
I’m still
Asking.

James Diaz (They/Them) is the founding editor of the literary arts intentional community and healing space Anti-Heroin Chic, as well as the author of three full length poetry collections: This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018), All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021), and Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022). Originally a southern native, they currently live in upstate 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 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

D. Dina Friedman
I Just Wanted to Let You Know

Today’s rain won’t slake
the earth’s thirst

though I did delight in the shiver of wet,
the darker, more truthful sky.

Before you come home, please
buy vitamins; get gas.

We might have to make a run
in the middle of the night.

And if we don’t have to, tonight
please reach for me in bed.

I haven’t been sleeping.
I need to feel you on my skin,

kind of like the rain today.
Do you know any secrets

of desert dry? Diamonds under
the sand? Or the dusty illusion

that like an injection, apocalypse
will only hurt for a second.

D. Dina Friedman is the author of the poetry chapbooks Here in Sanctuary, Whirling (Querencia Press, 2024) and Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in journals including Salamander, Rattle, The Sun, Mass Poetry, and Crab Orchard Review, and others. Friedman’s fiction includes the short-story collection Immigrants (Creators Publishing, 2023) and the YA novels Escaping Into the Night (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2006).

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.