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

Austin Alexis
Immigrants at the Southern Border

You tread across days, weeks
only to encounter barbed wires
gleaming in sunlight,
glowing like hell-flames.
You attempt to maneuver
through the spikey metal.
Each move you make
you step into a miniature cage.

Separated from your family
in order to provide for your family,
you know the loneliness
of cactus-heavy desert,
of a jailcell housing a single cot.

You don’t need to be called an animal
to understand the zoo of detention
or the mistreatment of being released
back to the hometown violence
you have been trying to escape.
You don’t need to be referred to as poison
to comprehend the prison of labels,
or to “get” how words, in the wrong mouth,
become not only a toxic drink
but a lethal one.

Austin Alexis is the author of the chapbooks Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems, both from Poets Wear Prada, and the full-length collection Privacy Issues published by Broadside Lotus Press. His second full-length collection, The Whirlpool Bath, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in late-summer 2025. He was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Competition in 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 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

Simon Leonard
Amerika

Amerika: The fascist or racist aspect of American society. From German Amerika; from the likening of the U.S. to Nazi Germany. The first known use of Amerika in the meaning defined above was in 1968 among New Left activists in the U.S.
          —Merriam-Webster, adapted

In the Amerikan gallery of great men
we find this image
of a defiant patriot, who, finally and quite
by chance, found what to be outraged about.
The glaze of his face is stained
with strawberry blood; ungovernable,
his arm challenges that other world
to take a better shot, the clench
of his jaw final confirmation that
those unnumbered unnamables might strive,
but Amerika, my Amerika — continent twisted
out of coal, casinos and swimsuit beauty, land
of fake tans because we can, wrought
from the disappointment of factory dreams
by a blow-dried god refusing to give
up on his raw-hide truth, or his grip
on the sacred and mysterious uterus, this
Amerika is the privilege
they can never take away from me.
Just let them try, his furious triumph
tells us, and they will see
how my Amerika becomes me.

Simon Leonard is the author of the chapbook Before I Forget (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Orbis, Envoi, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Roi Fainéant and Overheard, and other journals. Leonard teaches English at St. George’s The British International School in Cologne, Germany.

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

Vicki lorio
Spring Break

I knew the moment when
his sperm met my egg
no amount of douche

awash in my canal could
wash away this union. I diagnose
my dilemma sitting in my car

frozen at the traffic light that changes
from red to green to red in the early morning
light, so much for spring break.

Who was that guy anyway?
Just an idle diversion. He does not
taste my shame like I still taste him.

This would have been a clean sweep
in the time of my mother, my mother
of the burnt bra and loose nipples.

No more Roe v. Wade,
all slaves now—
we row when our white masters tell us to row.

Vicki lorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch (Local Gems Press, 2013), Not Sorry (Alien Buddha Press, 2020), and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter (dancinggirlpress, 2015) Something Fishy (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and Blabbermouth (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, The Fem Lit Mag, Black Coffee Review, Mom Egg Review, 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 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

Elaine Sexton
Sleeve

I finger the cardboard cover
of this cardboard take-out
coffee cup, here to protect
my palm, but what

a waste of a tree,
a life, whittled down
to––this paper,
this pencil, too, this idea

in my calloused hand
with its half-life of bearing
and soothing, folded
under my chin, left into right,

on my lap when not called on
to scratch my back
or pat the dog or touch
a scar where a hot pot scalded

skin, uncovered, the way
the day is born
with no promises. Late light
lances winter tree branches,

trees whose gnarled trunks
stand with old poles
made of Southern yellow
pine, or Douglas fir,

Western red cedar. Oh trees,
oh power lines no longer
needed¬––what utility now?
Now we are wired and

wireless. Wired and tired
I like to say. What else
could we be, living as we do,
as we must––through this.

Elaine Sexton‘s fifth collection of poetry, Site Specific: New & Selected, is forthcoming from Grid Books in 2025. Her poems are widely anthologized and published in journals including American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and O! the Oprah Magazine. She is the author of the libretto for The Post Office, a chamber opera in poems, in collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky, commissioned by Queen City Opera and developed by Opera Fusion: New Works/Cincinnati Opera. Sexton lives in New York and teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute.

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

Buffy Shutt
I Will Read Myself Out of This

How many books can I read in 1460 days?
I didn’t miss the peek-a-boo bra in the Rotunda
or the ten or 12 billionaires of America’s 758 in front of the cabinet
or the Vaquero hat Flotus wore to keep his lips off her.

I didn’t miss my heart racing.

1637 Tulipomania in Holland
1921 Analysis-mania. The good breast and the bad breast.
1964 Beatlemania
1965 She attends the LBJ inauguration ball. She is 15. Only a handful of millionaires.
Snow on the ground. Who doesn’t remember people in boots at The Statler Hilton?
1994 Sex mania. Clinton is the first president to send an email from the White House.
2013 Bacon-mania: Sales climb 9.5% hitting an all-time high of nearly $4 billion.
2017 Bitcoin-mania. 2025 Flotus joins in.
?-2025 Transgender-mania. About 1.14% of the population identifies as transgender.

Read about Moral panic:
A widespread feeling of fear that an evil person or thing
threatens the values, interests and well-being of a community.

Read about Hysteria:
A nervous affection,
occurring almost exclusively in women,
in which the emotions are exaggerated,
will power diminished,
the woman loses control over emotions,
becomes the victim of imaginary sensations.
The chief symptoms are convulsive, tossing movements of the limbs and head,
uncontrollable crying,
a choking sensation as if a ball were lodged in the throat.

Buffy Shutt is a poet living in Los Angeles. She worked to help people in Altadena after the Eaton Fire. She is a citizen. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Recruit to Deny, is now available for pre-sale from Indolent Books and will be published this quarter. Shutt is the author of Memos from the 20th 21st Century (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and animal magnetism (Yavanika Press 2024). Her poems have appeared in Anthropocene, Paper Dragon, Sonic Boom, Door is a Jar, Dodging the Rain, Book of Matches, and Split Lip Magazine, among others. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she worked in Hollywood for 30 years as an executive, marketing features and documentaries.

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

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.