Second Coming No. 28 — Feb. 16, 2025

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

Austin Alexis
Immigrants at the Southern Border

You tread across days, weeks
only to encounter barbed wires
gleaming in sunlight,
glowing like hell-flames.
You attempt to maneuver
through the spikey metal.
Each move you make
you step into a miniature cage.

Separated from your family
in order to provide for your family,
you know the loneliness
of cactus-heavy desert,
of a jail cell housing a single cot.

You don’t need to be called an animal
to understand the zoo of detention
or the mistreatment of being released
back to the hometown violence
you have been trying to escape.
You don’t need to be referred to as poison
to comprehend the prison of labels,
or to “get” how words, in the wrong mouth,
become not only a toxic drink
but a lethal one.

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Austin Alexis is the author of the chapbooks Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems, both from Poets Wear Prada, and the full-length collection Privacy Issues published by Broadside Lotus Press. His second full-length collection, The Whirlpool Bath, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books in late-summer 2025. He was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Flash Fiction Competition in 2024.

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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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