Second Coming No. 66 — March 26, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Lesléa Newman
The Morning After
The mean man won she has to tell her daughter who rushes into the kitchen hungry for breakfast and news. How? The child stops in the doorway, face dissolving into a mass of tears and disbelief. That’s not fair! Mom, he’s a bully! How to explain to her, or to herself how this could have happened? It’s okay, it’s okay. She rocks her daughter, her soothing words not soothing either of them. And now what? Cereal and milk? Work? School? Crawl under the covers for four dreary years? She was raised by a mother who always said, there’s no problem so terrible it can’t get worse. Are you happy now? she asks her long dead mother who loved being right though in this case she might have loved being wrong though wrong she is not. But right now she is the mother, the motherless mother of a distraught daughter who needs her to dry her tears slip on her shoes pour her Lucky Charms into a yellow bowl bright as a promise and somehow explain how the mean man won.
Lesléa Newman is the author of 87 books for readers of all ages including the memoirs-in-verse I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father; the novel-in-verse October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard; and the children’s books Sparkle Boy, Heather Has Two Mommies, and Joyful Song: A Naming Story. Her literary awards include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two National Jewish Book Awards, two American Library Association Stonewall Honors, and the Massachusetts Book Award. She is a past poet laureate of Northampton, MA.
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
|