Second Coming No. 67 — March 27, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Meryl Natchez
wishes for lawmakers
after Lucille Clifton
let them be pregnant
each man and woman of them.
let them be sick
and spooked
and clueless.
let every clinic
that could help
be closed.
let every doctor be barred
from discussing it.
let them try
bitter herbs and jumping.
let them consider
coat hangers
and grimy knives.
as their mouth fills
with the coppery spit of despair
let them stand before
lawmakers not unlike themselves
who rule against them.Meryl Natchez is the author of Catwalk (Longship Press, 2020), a Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year. Her poems and prose have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, LA Review of Books, Terrain, Hudson Review, and Poetry Northwest, among other journals. Natchez translated Poems from the Stray Dog Cafe: Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Gumilev (hit & run press, 2013). She lives in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area and serves on the board of the Marin Poetry Center.
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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