Second Coming No. 111 — May 10, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Elaine Sexton
Dear passing through,
Today, everything is influence
and proximity, a white
clapboard house bordering
a pasture is the color of wheat
gathered and bound
in shapes like upended
dreams. In the absence of light
the sky finds something
to look at in flat-faced
brackish backwater
ponds no one will ever see
from the road. From the train,
the air is dull, a dim
one could get used to,
but not miss on a clear day
when the green in
every thing takes back
its hue. Vines grope their posts
wearing hair nets made
to keep birds from making
a meal of their grapes.
Swallows fly up, and flap
away from the tracks.
The ride is a slideshow of
gullies and dirt, weeds
and rust, sea birds on thin ice,
low-lying clouds the color
and texture of a cough—
a limited palette one could
paint as a smudge.
You get used to the absence
of sun, you get used to
the idea of the eye’s
limitations. Does nature see
more? The restless mind
has more impressions than
can ever be expressed
as anecdote. You know this,
of course. Maybe a simile
will do. A wind turbine,
in passing, is like a sky-
scraping box fan, only
without a screen, a reachable
dial, an open window.
Elaine Sexton‘s fifth book of poems is Site Specific: New & Selected, (Grid Books, 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.
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What fantastic imagery. Thank you Elaine