Second Coming No. 144 — June 12, 2025

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

Olena Jennings
What We Make

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.

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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.

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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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