Second Coming No. 130 — May 29, 2025

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

Austin Alexis
The Media

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.

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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.

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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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Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.

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