Second Coming No. 60 — March 20, 2025

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

Susanna Rich
Morning After the Election I Make My Bed

Sound bites and tallies
scrambled my comforter,
unfit the fitting.
This is my morning.
To grunt, tug, wrestle
the mattress cover
to knuckle under edges,
fist the corners.
I unfurl the top sheet
to complain like a mainsail
in heavy wind. The flap.
The collapse into wrinkles.
Mocking my hope of joy.
Tuck. Tuck. Everything
tucked. Folded onto itself.
Pillows, like blanked eyes.
The shams. The sham.
The blanket stretched hard
for the quarter to bounce
Washington’s profile,
check my skill, my worth.
I make my bed
to take back yesterday,
last week, summer,
wrestle the whole cloth,
hospital corners, quilted
down, the too many threads,
fluff the pillows, crawl
back in, pull the sheet
over my face.

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Susanna Rich is the author of five poetry collections, most recently SHOUT! Poetry for Suffrage (Blast Press, 2020) and Beware the House (Poet’s Press, 2019). Recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Program and the Collegium Budapest, she is a distinguished professor emerita of English at Kean University in Union, NJ. Rich presents one-woman, audience-interactive poetry experiences through her company Wild Nights Productions.

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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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