Second Coming No. 55 — March 15, 2025

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

Linda McCauley Freeman
To Our Great and Anonymous Dead

You who suffered
baton blows,
cuffs and Klans, chains
and chances. You who held
the tantalizing tastes of freedom
on your tongue. You who stepped
up and stepped forward and stepped
out. You who saw a vision of this land
as one for all people. You who knew
our pronoun should always be we.
Not them. Not Other.
But sister and brother.
To our great anonymous dead,
lead us now against temptation
to block the news, to close
our eyes, to shrug, to sleep,
to lie down
and let it all die.

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Linda McCauley Freeman is the author of The Marriage Manual: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2024) and The Family Plot: Poems (Backroom Window Press, 2022). Her poems have appeared in journals including New World Writing Quarterly, Delta Poetry Review, Lightwood, Chronogram, and Fourth & Sycamore, among others. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a swing dance teacher and a yoga instructor.

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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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