Second Coming No. 137 — June 5, 2025

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.

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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.

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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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