Second Coming No. 100 — April 29, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
D. Dina Friedman
Poem Set in the Present Moment Featuring My Mother’s Voice
Sun filters through the shutter’s brown slats
If I open the shade, it will tell me
you’re ok. The world goes on
even here in the scrubby canals of space
between buildings, wilting flowers
fenced in tiny yards. At times
the sun can be an enemy
spewing the heat sucked from concrete walls.
My hand burns on the black railing of our brick steps
and this is how I know, the sun is not God,
not perfect. But sometimes, especially these times
I need to depend on what is unshakably there
the squawking vowels of my mother’s New York voice,
as at ninety, she goes about her day—the bank, the fruit store,
the calls to helpers to care for the squat remaining house
on a block full of demolitions, all rebuilt with shinier bricks.
How tall I am in the sun’s kiss,
an elongated shadow.
D. Dina Friedman is the author of the poetry chapbooks Here in Sanctuary, Whirling (Querencia Press, 2024) and Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared Salamander, Rattle, The Sun, Mass Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. Friedman’s fiction includes the short-story collection Immigrants (Creators Publishing, 2023) and the YA novels Escaping Into the Night (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2006).
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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