Second Coming No. 2 – Jan. 21, 2025

A poem-a-day series in creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the incoming presidential administration

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Jesse Bradley-Amore
To the voters who treat voting like deepthroating a shotgun that they hope is empty

You don’t care
as long you can celebrate
the wreckage of your choices,
pick your teeth with the splinters,
get tipsy on tears that aren’t yours.

What you forget is
nothing will get better
until you have enough money
to get the right people to listen.
But even then, you’ll pull

Up the ladder. Even then,
you’ll tell people: I did this
all by myself. But you’re wrong.
It takes a village
to burn itself down

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Jesse Bradley-Amore is a writer, cartoonist, and (occasional) improviser based out of Winter Park, FL. His stories have been featured on RISK! and The Volume Knob. His comics have been published in Oyez Review and Action, Spectacle. Under his J. Bradley pen name, he’s the author of Teenage Wasteland: An American Love Story and has fiction in Short Edition dispensers. His solo show, How I Learned (NOT) To Drive, is set to debut this year at various festivals throughout the country.

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Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series in creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the incoming presidential administration. 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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