Second Coming No. 45 — March 5, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Oz Hardwick
The Results Are In
[Note: This is a prose poem; Substack does not allow for justified alignment]
The colony contracts like a leaden lung, and again the ego descends, swaggering like a gaoler and swiping what it pleases. Mine are the mines and machines and all their meaningful means, it minces through butt-puckered lips. Don’t mind if I do, it leers, as peachy juice smears its wobbling chin. The state shrinks with the wheedle and wince, the whiney vowels and the consonants like cracking teeth, the voice of vice and violation that grabs at the soft parts of the vulnerably sweet, and squeezes. Mine is the morning after, the mourning aftermath, the pantomime of bruised innocence, it sneers, its pig eyes squinting into wrinkles like glassed flesh in a barroom brawl. Don’t mind at all, it barks, wiping the blood from its callused paws. The borders tighten like a barbed wire noose, and the self-proclaimed messiah dons his hood and latex gloves. Mine is the meat, the sweat, the salt, and the stink, it grunts, unzipping its human skin to a chorus of sob and choke. Don’t mind me, it snorts, plunging into whimpering soft.
Oz Hardwick is the author most recently of the poetry collection Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog, 2024). His poems have appeared in The Mackinaw, Anthropocene, One Hand Clapping, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Wordgathering, and other journals. In 2024 he received both the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and the Dolors Alberola International Poetry Prize.
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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