Second Coming No. 22 — Feb. 10, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Scarlet Envy
Queens Walking
Clicking in the dessert like scorpions
Echoed clacking turns the tide
Saturation to the brim
Powder pulsating across
Constellations like blood
Lubed up under armor
Queens walking and riding
Unicorns with bows and arrows piercing
Chandelier earrings and ballroom
Conversations you can’t hear because the
Band is on
Slow motion into battle with flags
In your embarrassing unfinished seams
Silken unravellings falling with ease
Unease emotionally
Cutting hems and creases and lines
Weapons in painted sticky fingers
Trademarked cat eye for an eye
Shadow asked for my hand
In an arranged marriage
Bursting like rotten fruit against the screen
Making preserves with spoiled potential
Who waters this desert orchard?
Growing superstars on the vine
Peeling off the walls like ghosts
Naturally with no filters for
Saloon girl attitudes and vanity lights
Fighting fashionably for life and past life
Sound stages free of sound and sand
And tumbleweeds
How is there water here much less
Ice cream in the drain
Smile in the wind, the tide continues to rotate
Take your face off now
For the harvest
Waltz worked again
A new batch of hot stars crispy with new light
Fresh from the desert orchard
Dancing with ghosts and rare horses
Be careful, the curling iron is still on
Scarlet Envy is the author of the chapbook Scarlet Envy: She’s a Poet (Indolent Books, 2024). Her 2024 cabaret show Bad Advice was nominated for BroadwayWorld Awards in four categories. Scarlet’s television appearances include RuPaul's Drag Race (season 11), RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars (season 6), RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs. the World (series 2), iCarly (2023), The Weakest Link (2022), The Carrie Diaries (2015), and Saturday Night Live (2017), as well as a lead role in the short film Only Worn Once (2023). Scarlet holds undergraduate degrees in advertising design and communications from Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. Her full-length poetry debut, Am I the Drama?, is forthcoming from Indolent Books.
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.
Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.
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Thank you Michael