Second Coming No. 120 — May 19, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House and his regime
Kathleen Hellen
loudspeaker
They do not want a perfect voice, they want a perfect personality.
— A. M. Low
The human voice never ceases
when once words are spoken.
This pitiful quality of reproduced sound
referred to as a strange person,
strange or new, a magnified telephone
with a trumpet upon it. This big diaphragm
moving so hard to get a big noise, greatly
improved by padding the horn.
In other words, we are compelled,
our cabinet with a fern upon it.
The strange cries of partisans
which too often exaggerate every fault.
Noise; or sound, if we are lucky,
when thinking of the public.
Interference is certainly a difficulty.
Money for our art. The ordinary gas product.
A couple of dozen foreign-made valves
—then, we should make a great advance
at double their value. We all know that when
a lighted cigarette is whirled round in the hand
the result appears to be a ring of fire.
It is the reception that mangles the sound.
Note: This poem comprises phrases and sentences from the book Wireless Possibilities, by A.M. Low (1888–1956), published in the To-day and To-morrow series of speculative essays issued as short books between 1923 and 1931 by Kegan Paul in London and E. P. Dutton in United States. —Ed.
Kathleen Hellen is the author of the poetry collections The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin (Saddle Road Press, 2018), Meet Me at the Bottom (Main Street Rag, 2022), and Umberto’s Night (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2012) as well as the chapbooks Pentimento (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and The Girl Who Loved Mothra (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Recent poems have appeared in City of Asylum, Belt Magazine, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Disappointed Housewife, New World Writing Quarterly, 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.
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