Second Coming No. 63 — March 23, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Paula Rudnick
Changed
A Delta jet landed on its roof last week, hanging passengers upside down like bats surveying crumbs from their last snack, their condition changed from light to leaded, winged to grounded, safe to dangling at the moment they thought they had arrived. I did 45 sit-ups this morning— not bad for a person my age. My body didn’t ache too much when I got out of my organic-fiber bed. The coffee exceptionally good today, just the right amount of strong, mellowed by a splash of half-and-half sipped slowly from an antique floral mug. The lemon-ginger scone I quick-defrosted tasted almost like fresh-baked and the lilies that I bought on sale yesterday perfumed the air. No one shot at me when I picked up the newspaper, dropped at my front door before dawn’s light, my life unchanged from how it was a month ago, except nothing’s the same. Inside my chest a heaviness I can’t cocktail-hour away, inside my throat a rant ready to spill. The small blue leatherette passport I used to flash invincibly makes me lower eyelids when border guards request my documents now like in some vintage black and white movie where things get bad and then there’s no escape and I am bolted to my seat prepared for impact, weighing who to call to pledge my love.
Paula Rudnick is the author of the poetry collection Now is Not a Good Time (self-published, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Halfway Down the Stairs, LA Jewish Journal and Kosmos Quarterly as well as in the anthologies What We Talk About When We Talk About It Vol. II (Darkhouse Books, 2020), Verdant Truth Serum Vol. 5 (Truth Serum Press, 2019), and The Place Where Everyone’s Name is Fear (Anxiety/Outcast Press, 2022). A former television producer and a mother of two daughters, Rudnick lives in Los Angeles.
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.
If you like Second Coming and you want to support it, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.
Second Coming is a section of Beachcomber Mike. To unsubscribe from a section:
1. Navigate to your account Settings page via www.substack.com/settingsand click on the publication you want to make changes to.
2. Slide the toggle next to each section you'd like to stop receiving emails or app notifications from. A gray toggle indicates that notifications will be off for that section.
 | A guest post by
|