Second Coming No. 35 — Feb. 23, 2025

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

D. Dina Friedman
I Just Wanted to Let You Know

Today’s rain won’t slake
the earth’s thirst

though I did delight in the shiver of wet,
the darker, more truthful sky.

Before you come home, please
buy vitamins; get gas.

We might have to make a run
in the middle of the night.

And if we don’t have to, tonight
please reach for me in bed.

I haven’t been sleeping.
I need to feel you on my skin,

kind of like the rain today.
Do you know any secrets

of desert dry? Diamonds under
the sand? Or the dusty illusion

that like an injection, apocalypse
will only hurt for a second.

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D. Dina Friedman is the author of the poetry chapbooks Here in Sanctuary—Whirling (Querencia Press, 2024) and Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in journals including Salamander, Rattle, The Sun, Mass Poetry, and Crab Orchard Review, and others. Friedman’s fiction includes the short-story collection Immigrants (Creators Publishing, 2023) and the YA novels Escaping Into the Night (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2006).

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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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