Second Coming No. 56 — March 16, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
John Cross
Back to the Beginning
a child with a crayon spinning through the air of a mostly invisible universe draws trees & mountains lifting & falling with the breeze draws one tiny man with wispy cockroach-leg hair waiting for the firing squad he’s ordered that’s meandered into the suburbs selling sovereigntist anthems door to door paper targets where their hearts should be & the child imagines heat in a salt mine near the hidden deep of the earth that keeps pushing up red orange swirls as any child might do & she scrawls some forgotten word for how she feels right now
John Cross is the author of the poetry collection What Bleak Angels Carried Your Bed, forthcoming from Omnidawn Press, and the chapbook staring at the animal (Tupelo Press, 2009). His poems have appeared in journals including Volt, Lana Turner, and Yalobusha Review, among others. He teaches English at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena and lives in Monrovia, Calif., with artist Christine Kiphart and a dog named Gordon.
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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