Second Coming No. 86 — April 15, 2025

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

Sarah Dickenson Snyder
Praise This Wakening into Light

nothing is ever one thing  I never want something wild in my house      but I’m wild
about milky tea and homemade soup   the clean light-green slice of an avocado   I could bathe
in cilantro  in lemons  in red wine  find me wild on summer bike rides where I say thank you!
into wind   I am wild about grammar    I am wild about letters and words but have misspelled many
on a chalkboard     thank goodness for students who fixed my mistakes   I am wild
about middle school hands in the air    the squeals of wanting    to answer or ask a question   maybe
to hear their own voices     in the universe     I want to help save the world
from those with guns   I want to affix wings on children cowering under desks     lift them out
of a brokenness    I want to grow flowers in the hearts of parents       I want the fires to end  
the smoke to clear   the fear to disappear     this world might be ending   so how am I still  wild
about my feet especially after I paint my toenails pink    I’m surprised that the small girl
sitting on cement steps in the scalloped-edged photo is the same as the wilder bra-less one
in college   and then   all that searching    no one to keep warm   there is not one single speck
of me that wants to die   and yet          one day even the sun      will be done  

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Sarah Dickenson Snyder is the author of the poetry collections Now These Three Remain (Lily Poetry Review, 2023), With a Polaroid Camera (Main Street Rag, 2019), Notes from a Nomad (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and The Human Contract (Kelsay Books, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO, among other journals. Snyder lives in Vermont, where she carves in stone and rides her bike.

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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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