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

Anastasia Vassos
Right to Choose

I stopped my bicycle for a snapping turtle
by the side of the highway. She excavated
a dusty hole in sand & dirt to lay
eggs & why did she choose
such proximity to danger? So intimate
a task! I wore fingered gloves
(that cold New England spring day)
& picked her up gently by the sides of her shell
(razored teeth & stocky limbs out of reach)
to place her farther from the perils
of that road—cars ripping the asphalt
as they swiped past & me
after all trembling on my bike—
so she could dig her nesting place
& let fall her eggs before leaving for good.
I did the best I could, I thought—
to stop pedaling, to protect her—
& whatever it was she wanted to do.

Anastasia Vassos is the author of the poetry collection Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate Books, 2021) and the poetry chapbook Nostos (Kelsay Books, 2023). Her poems have appeared in Diode, One Art, The Ekphrastic Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and other journals. A reader for Lily Poetry Review, Vassos lives in Boston.

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 and his regime

Susan Goodman
A Place of Rest

At the end of this planet is a single bench
above a canyon, near a border
ringed with teeth and bone,
close to a depth of water
making no sound.

I step away for some moments
while the grey skies turn
and the red smoke burns,
while the world rumbles and groans,
while it swallows and spews.

I watch and stay quiet
as it begins to come near
and I turn to its instants and outcomes.

I return each day to the edge of the world,
sink down to the sidewalk and listen.

Susan Goodman’s poems have appeared in What Rough Beast, Nixes Mate Review, The Columbia Review, Barrow Street, Corvus Review, and elsewhere. As a Barnard College undergraduate, she received the George Edward Woodberry Poetry Prize. Now retired, Goodman worked as a magazine and nonprofit copywriter. She lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

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 and his regime

Olena Jennings
What We Make

Holding onto the thread of freedom,
a bright red streak of embroidery thread
that my grandmother used to create
an imaginary bird,
slow stitches in and out.

Now I see that bird
soaring through city streets
as I look up at the still clear sky
while concrete crumbles beneath it
and tears fill the cracks in sidewalks.

Our bookshelf is empty, the books stacked
against the window,
the words fortresses, concealing
the view of the bird,
red as my grandmother’s heart, flitting its wings.

Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collections The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press, 2022) and Songs from an Apartment (Underground Books, 2017), as well as the chapbook Memory Project (Underground, 2018), and the novel Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in KGB Bar Lit, MicroLit, The Common, Tupelo Quarterly, Live Mag, and other journals. She is the translator of collections by Ukrainian poets Kateryna Kalytko (co-translated with Oksana Lutsyshyna), Iryna Shuvalova, Vasyl Makhno, and Yuliya Musakovska. Her translation of Anna Malihon’s Girl with a Bullet is forthcoming from World Poetry Books. She lives in Queens, New York where she founded and co-curates the Poets of Queens reading series and 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 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 and his regime

Laura Ann Reed
All You Need

—after Meryl Natchez

It’s Wednesday. The President says, “We don’t want ‘em”
as he expands the travel ban
and our neighbors crank up their stereo loud
enough for us to hear The Beatles
preaching love.

I suppose I could start with forbearance
towards my dentist’s hygienist
who voted Red.
But would that make a difference, really?
Would anything make a difference?

“Still, I’m uneasy doing nothing,”
I say to my husband
as we stand on the porch at twilight
watching the dragonflies
zigzag over the peonies and pines
stitching up the dusk
and taking out the mosquitos with their bloodthirsty goals.
While we go on doing the best we can.

Laura Ann Reed is the author of the debut poetry collection Homage to Kafka (The Poetry Box, 2025). Her poems have appeared in One Art, The Galway Review, SWIMM, Willawaw Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies including Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems (Grayson Books, 2023), edited by by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby Wilson. Reed is a Contributing Editor with The Montréal Review.

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 and his regime

Walter Holland
The Vanishings

The vanishings occur in daylight
or late at night
in schools or outside courts,
in churches or in stores,
on street corners,
old basements,
behind simple screen doors,
or off of a playground, or
in a car, or
at an intersection,
every day, more and more
these vanishings become
swift vanishings, vanishings
in vans, in SUVs, with dark windows,
shoved in the back
with handcuffs locked
until the vanished vanish in a plane.
The vanishings go unexplained and those
who are left behind remain uncertain
what to do,
who to ask and
who to call. Some witnesses say
they saw it all,
but would rather not give their names.
The men who came
cannot explain,
why the vanished
are detained and for
what reason they are blamed.
The men are dressed in black,
wear black masks of black netting,
have black shades over
that, wear black
boots and hold black
guns and some would say
they hear them laugh,
and some would say
that no one’s coming back.

Walter Holland is the author of the poetry collections Reconstruction (Finishing Line Press, 2022), Circuit (Chelsea Station Editions, 2010), Transatlantic (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), and A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992 (Magic City Press, 1992) as well as a novel, The March (Chelsea Station Editions, revised edition, 2011). His poems have appeared in Poetry Bay, Impossible Archetype, About Place Journal, CutBank, The Rappahannock Review, and other journals, as well as in the anthology In the Footsteps of a Shadow: North American Literary Responses to Fernando Pessoa (MadHat Press, 2025).

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 and his regime

Henry A. Childers
Strategy Session

they sat around the table
as though it was a fire
hunched in close with coffee cups
on the otherwise empty patio
all of you know what is happening, he said
the question is: what do we do?
do we run? do we fight? do we wait?

back when we were young, one said
it was go to Canada or go to ‘Nam
we’re not there yet but it could come

another one said let’s hit the streets
we’ll do it like we did back then
and we keep it up until we win

the last one said that’s what they want
for us to run or fight
but I say stay, keep out of the way
and let them own what they have wrought

Henry A. Childers‘ poems have appeared in Sandcutters, the annual review of the Arizona State Poetry Society. He has returned to writing poetry after a professional career in technology and a creative career as a singer-songwriter.

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 and his regime

Frances Camper
First Ice

What if this cluster of disparate symptoms turns out to be a syndrome of some concern
What if I am the one who discovers this despite my array of competent, very nice doctors

                                                                                As always, the ice appears in just one day.
                                                                                We don’t always get to see what goes on
                                                                                beneath the surface.

What if most people will never be able to think differently than they think right now
What if those same people do not understand that this is even a problem

                                                                                The river runs it to the banks, the ice
                                                                                piles up like rubble.  I can’t escape
                                                                                that image though it shimmers white.

What if he doesn’t get recognition until after he dies
What if that last time I saw my brother is the last time I will see him

                                                                                It’s even hard to know what to hope for
                                                                                with all that ice piled up, like in the war.

Francie Camper‘s poems have appeared in Pulse and Vineyard Gazette. After many years as a clinical social worker in New York’s Westchester County, she began writing and studying poetry at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, where she has also served on the board. In 1970, along with Kathy Dobkin and Milton Hoffman, she produced a historic marathon reading of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace on radio station WBAI in New York that included some 170 readers over fives days, including celebrated authors, actors, and other public figures, captivating the city and making headlines in its then robust roster of daily newspapers.

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 and his regime

Nan Wigington
Ordinary Morning

What I remember
colludes with
what I forget.

It happened last night,
tomorrow morning,

in the white of winter,
the sweat of summer.

The war had begun,
it was undone.

The moon limped behind the junipers.
The sun heaved its heavy heart across the horizon.

Everyone watched. No one saw.

You ran, slipped—
on a wet leaf, a streak of blood, snow.

I saw their guns, luminescent,
their car, their tank beside you,

their soldiers, ours—
how they just took you.

In my dreams, you come back.
It is us again, ordinary, you at the table,

me making breakfast, onions and eggs, garlic and toast,
but I wake, and you’re still gone.

My heart is a chaos—
This their greatest victory.

Nan Wigington‘s poems and flash fiction have appeared in Alternative Milk Magazine, Idle Ink, Tiny Molecules, Molotov Cocktail, The Ekphrastic Review and other journals. She lives in a large retirement community on the eastern edge of Denver.

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 and his regime

Alice Campbell Romano
Mightier

Because I am too much spirit
I prowled hospital tents by Whitman’s side,
watched him cup the chin of a soldier who had no hands,
then lift the boy’s shoulders to help him sip soft water.

Because I am too much spirit
I rose above the hospital, let my atoms pull away
one from another, to spread in the sulfured air over battlefields,
recognizing each numb fear, blue or gray.

But I was not yet enough spirit
to have mended there and then. Whitman with his transcendent pen
could not curb the thrusts of gold-braid generals.
Whitman was one man writing, and too few leaders read.

But I have gathered strength
from the hundred, the thousand, wars since then—
colonizers, tribal massacres, Great War trenches,
Hiroshima, Syria, you can list them.

But do you know—do you have an inkling of what I can do?
I am. I am too much spirit now—all the dead on muddy fields, all
the collateral shattered children,
every war-freed soul.

I have the might of millions.
We will sweep around the planet in a cosmic wind.
We will dump back down on every council
ashes, chunks of bone, screams, tears, numb fears, women raped

and habitats of tiny insects spoiled.
Writing is what my wind of souls
will blow around the leaders and the sellers
so the words that tell how it is, how it really is
will mount up and choke the clamoring for blood.

Alice Campbell Romano is the author of the chapbook The Consolation of Geometry (C&R Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in Minerva Rising, The New Verse News, The Marbled Sigh, Persimmon Tree, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and other journals, as well as in Starry, Starry Night: An Ekphrastic Anthology Inspired by Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (The Ekphrastic Review, 2022). A child of the Hudson Highlands and New York City, Campbell Romano lives in Bronxville, NY, and is an active member of the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center.

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 and his regime

Alan Perry
Darkness Redux

—November 5, 2024

Your heart says don’t forget her
resists conceding to a sundown.
But in fading light, don’t you feel
the jagged scree beneath your feet
chiseled to cut your chosen path?
And don’t you mourn these
waning days of sunlight, how clocks
tick backwards at every sunset?
You’ve seen this cycle before
waded through turgid hells
felt bloodsuckers twist
and feed on tenderness.
But can you work again in darkness—
take what light you have, offer it
as a miner’s headlamp
clear this tunnel of debris?
You know the dark season of sun
when oblique rays sharpen
to an empty howling wind.
But oh, how light will find you well
past midnight, at the break of dawn.

Alan Perry is the author of the chapbook Clerk of the Dead (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2020). His poems have appeared in Tahoma Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, San Pedro River Review, One Art, and other journals. Perry is a founder and co-managing editor of  the poetry journal RockPaperPoem, and a senior poetry editor for Typehouse Magazine. His chapbook The Heart of It is forthcoming in 2025 from Kelsay 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 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.