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.

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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.

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.

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—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.

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.

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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 Books, 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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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          —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.

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.

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You should have the body. She was asleep
in bed when the airstrike rockets—One! Two!—
slammed into the house. Now her remains
are flattened, charred, bundled in a shroud
awaiting burial along with six shrouded siblings.

You should have the body. He was heading home
from work, when agents nabbed and shackled him,
shoved him on a plane to the homeland he once fled
for his life. Now he swelters in a cage with scores
more detainees, and officials shrug with glee.

You should have the body. He had just bought
cigarettes at the corner store, when he was
apprehended and kneed to the curb for nine
long minutes. Now his final throes linger in replay
on the digital stage for our wonder and disgust.

You should have the body. A body of outrage
that flares for these moments. It might dwindle,
frail for lack of oxygen. Now, we inhabit this body,
and we are called to breathe voice into it, hold it
holy, so more bodies might righteously survive.

Robbie Gamble is the author of the chapbook A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in One Art, Post Road, Whale Road Review, Salamander, and The Sun and other journals. He divides his time between Boston and an apple orchard in Vermont.

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.

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.

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He knows the way.
I know the way.
The way is simple,

a circle around water.
Toby tenses, his tail pointing
to the stench of manure and mold.

He erupts from the car
like a horse at the starting gate,
but then quickly circles back,

nose to the snow-patched mud,
more like a truffle pig.
I remember the time Toby leapt

into the blue-green, broke habit
to bag a goose, how they performed
a water ballet, his circling

while she dove, resurfaced,
dove, and resurfaced
until he gave up.

But today, we’re working
with winterkill. Dead fish,
their stink, laces the shore.

Rolling and wagging,
he perfumes himself
with death. Why do I struggle

to start the circle?
Do I turn right to open
sky or left into the complexity

of trees, weeds, and shifty slopes?
No matter the choice,
I need to, I must go through

all of it. I feel stuck.
Inaction is not a choice.
But winter is breaking.

The ice floats the current
like little boats dissipating
into a multiverse manned by geese.

Just in case I’m never seen again,
I post pictures, share my location.
Being alone is thrilling,

But I keep my ears tuned
to the frequency
of male malfeasance,

to the footfalls of the serial killers,
rapists, and right-wing politicians
my fear-mongering mother installed

in my school-girl hippocampus.
Closing clouds, slipping sun, the ceaseless wind,
tongue-tied. We are automatons,

pre-programmed. Toby circles me
in ever-increasing arcs,
makes sure I do not disappear.

Pam Sinicrope‘s poems have appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Night Heron Barks, Poems in the Afterglow, FERAL, SWWIM Every Day, and other journals. Sinicrope holds an MFA from Augsburg University and a doctorate in public health from the University of Texas-Houston. She lives in Rochester, MN with her husband, her mother-in-law, and their Pudelpointer, Toby.

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.

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.

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The message is the blade, the life-ending exhale.
Time buckles the floor. Mind leaps from body.
Afloat, ethereal, free fall, sky eye,
Gripless, groundless, life swerves yet you land.

Time buckles the floor. Mind leaps from body.
Here’s a new country, before, after new language:
gripless, groundless. Life swerves yet you land
open-mouthed to new air, tongue to new words.

Here’s a new country, before/after, new language.
Unfreeze, move through the ache.
Open your mouth to new air, tongue to a new word.
Eat grief to landslide forward, stones your new food.

Unfreeze your moves, speak love through the ache.
Afloat, ethereal, free falling sky eye
Eat grief to fuel the way forward, stones your new food.
The message is the blade, the lifesaving inhale.

Bruce E. Whitacre is the author of Good Housekeeping (Poets Wear Prada, 2024) and The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks (Crown Rock Media, 2022). His poems have appeared in World Literature Today, Amethyst Review, Kearney Creates, Dear Booze, Pine Hills Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies. Whitacre holds an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. A Nebraska native and a retired theatre executive, he lives in Forest Hills, Queens with his husband.

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.

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.

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At what point does the camel topple,
its wide flat feet unsteady over horned split toes,
triple-lidded eyes tearful in their double row of lash?

When does the beast of burden
bite the hand that cinches up the saddle
and drop back broken to its knobby knees?

Those who shrug at hot spit warnings
under-estimate how long a camel
holds a grudge.

Handlers may think a bridle and a crop,
a load of freshly baled hay,
determine who the leader is.

Even creatures who appear
to withstand thirst for weeks or even months
can’t go forever without love or water.

The straw before the straw
that breaks the creature’s back
may go unnoticed

by a single-lidded oaf
without a camel’s sense
of when enough’s enough.

Paula Rudnick is the author of Now Is Not a Good Time (independently published, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, LA Jewish Journal, Poetic Medicine, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Kosmos Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies. A former TV producer whose credits range from late-night rock-and-roll shows to Emmy-nominated movies, Paula lives in Los Angeles.

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.

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.

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          6 November 2024

In a place where nothing dies,
a blackness between trees.

We carry darkness there
and drop it like a bone.

We carry deer names, dog names.
We carry them like hope.

We carry a fear which can’t hear
the singing beneath leaves.

We bring our dangerous fingers,
stained with madder and blood.

In the unseen
place where nothing dies,

we hold the eyeless, the featherless.
We hold the fallen.

Dion O’Reilly is the author of the chapbook Limerence (Floating Bridge Press, 2025) and the full-length collections Sadness of the Apex Predator (Cornerstone Press, 2024) and Ghost Dogs (Terrapin Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Canary, Rhino, Cultural Daily, Rattle, Sequestrum, and other journals. O’Reilly divides 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 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.

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.

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I am an old woman who meditates for peace
I am surprised I have lived this long
Bombers flew overhead when I was born
Children cower as bombs fly

I am surprised I have lived this long
My home has heat and light
Children cower as bombs fly
Buildings collapse in flame

My home has heat and light
I have planned my own cremation
Buildings collapse in flame
I focus my mind on my breath

I have planned my own cremation
Bombers flew overhead when I was born
I focus my mind on my breath
How can I meditate when there is no peace

Vera Kewes Salter is the author of the chapbook In Lewy’s Body (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The Raven’s Perch, CommuterLit, Right Hand Pointing, Medical Literary Messenger, Red Eft Review, and other journals. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Girl on the Underground, is forthcoming from Broadstone Media. Having grown up in England, Salter lives in New Rochelle, NY.

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.

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.

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By way of wind power
or via batteries or solar panels.
By way of old-fashioned electricity
or even aboriginal manual turning of pages
the media is here, is there,
insistent as it zooms
into your eyes, down your ear tunnels,
up your unwilling butt.
The quicksand grip of it
hopes you won’t escape.
You nearly drown in its images, verbiage,
rumbling mumbo jumbo.
With a tidbit of good taste
and a monumental load of bad,
sacred—at least in its own eyes—
it demands to be obeyed
as a know-it-all,
to be sought after like a femme fatale.
Feel how it presses down
with metatarsal fingers,
how it massages you
into sweaty passive compliance.
It desires the sacrifice of your time,
your energy, your cash flow.
Cling to self-protection
since there’s no telling
what all the channels of media
with octopus appendages will do
to the slither of sanity
you still hold on to.
Think of your will power
it wants to zap from you
like a mega stun gun
drunk on a volcano of wattage
more powerful than any god.

Austin Alexis is the author of the poetry collection Privacy Issues (Broadside Lotus Press, 2014), winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, as well as of two chapbooks from Poets Wear Prada—Lovers and Drag Queens (2014) and For Lincoln & Other Poems (2010). His poems have appeared in About Place Journal, Acoustic Levitation, 5of4 Music, The Westchester Review, Tryst, and other journals. A new collection,The Whirlpool Bath, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in 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.

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.

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Oikos, a monkey, dead at the bottom of the ocean September 15, 1947.

In the shower, thoughts of the Shoah, heaps of shoes.

Bent-over men with shaved heads encaged in Salvadoran prisons.

A man I know, the son of a friend, has written poems about mushrooms, a suite of thirty with intimate black and white photos of their frills and coils and cavities.

At the dentist, deep pockets. If you’re not careful, your teeth will fall out. How can that not sound like the scoldings your mother gave you.

After that, I lose my car near the Sawtooth Building, ask a stranger, then do what she says—two blocks left, two blocks right.

Language appears and disappears, like my car, like light and darkness, with a will of its own.

The late-night comic says the Secretary of War has tattoos that are ashamed of him.

Stand up, stand up, a voice says. I can’t help it. I am ashamed.

Something’s dead in the basement of the Pentagon, pungent and sweet.

Linda Lancione is the author of the chapbooks The Taste of Blood (Finishing Line Press, 2016), 2% Organic: Poems from a West Marin Dairy Barn (Wordrunner Press, 2008), This Short Season (Small Poetry Press, 2001), and Wanting the Moon (Wildflower Press, 1981). Her poems and essays have appeared in Verdad, Softblow, The Sun, Kelsay Books Blog, Cimarron Review, and other journals. With Burl Willes, she co-authored the travel guides Undiscovered Islands of the Mediterranean (John Muir Publications, 1990) and Undiscovered Islands of the U.S. and Canadian West Coast (Avalon Travel Pub, 1991). A longtime Berkeley resident, Lancione is a former ESL teacher and an avid traveler.

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.

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.

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          for Volodymyr Zelensky

I couldn’t wait to tell you how
overjoyed we were when you
accepted our invitation. Your keen
wit lightened this despondency
that lingers like a wet, heavy fog.

I love to prepare exotic dishes
but hope they won’t suffer
by comparison to the stalwart
stews of your homeland. By now
I’m sure you’ve gathered
there’s another reason for my letter.

When dad hadn’t shown by nine,
I closed my eyes praying
he had passed out somewhere.
But then he arrived, stumbling
and hoarse, wind bitten cheeks

and bleary eyes. He is, God
forgive me, a vindictive buffoon.
Picking fights with my brother.
Goading and insulting you. When he

started with his disgusting songs,
slopping food like a hound, we were
drenched in shame. Oh sweet friend,
what must you think of us?

What a repugnant show
of hospitality for our valiant
pilgrim. Please don’t judge us
by our father. I don’t
love him, and I don’t want to.

I don’t care about the coy stories
of his rough courtship with mama.
His dour charm and creepy sense
of humor. Authenticity counts
for nothing if you’re a liar.

I can’t explain, but when I see
their wedding photograph,
I can only ask: Why didn’t she
break the spell? Even if
I was never born.

Christopher Stephen Soden is the author of the poetry collections Tempting God (Luchador Press, 2024), Gusher (Queer Mojo, 2022), and Closer (Queer Mojo, 2011). His poems have appeared in Rattle, The Cortland Review, Borderlands, The James White Review, Origami Poems Project, The Still Blue Project, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Gents, Bad Boys & Barbarians: New Gay Male Poetry (Alyson Publications, 1995), ed. Rudy Kikel. A native Texan, Soden holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

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.

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.

Second Coming is a section of Beachcomber Mike. To unsubscribe from a section:

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Would there be any suburbs fake grassed golf courses
and green pickle ball courts where would all the Real

Housewives live would the buffalo roam again would
the trains run on time would I be working a pig farm

in Albania or be a fisherman sailing the Greek Isles
would the sky be the same shade of blue with Costco

WalmartCVSStarbucks cornering every market would
grandma ever have learned English the coke ovens

ever been stoked and the bars filled would the shining
city on the hill be filled with light or would we be every

-day failures limited to everyday dreams would history
be kind wrap us in whitewashed linen our transgressions

becoming wisps of smoke changing the shape of heaven
would the last people turned away remember our names.

Alex Stolis is the author of the poetry collections Pop. 1280 (Cyberwit, 2021) and John Berryman Died Here (Cyberwit, 2020), as well as the chapbooks Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife (Louisiana Literature Press, 2024), RIP Winston Smith (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres (Bottlecap Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Ink in Thirds, San Pedro Review, Unleashed Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, and other journals. Stolis lives in upstate New York with his partner, poet Catherine Arra.

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.

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.

Second Coming is a section of Beachcomber Mike. To unsubscribe from a section:

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