Second Coming No. 70 — March 30, 2025

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

Tina Barry
Iced Over

Three days of snow and now rain
freezes, turns the bare trees into glass.

I’m trying to stay positive, to see
the cold as a blessing, a fairytale

world, where I don’t inch along my ice-
covered walk, anticipating

the tumble, feet flying, hat aloft.
Stuck inside, I watch the news.

People on planes dumping
the contents of their suitcases

on each other’s heads. At Starbuck’s,
a man melts down

when the cream on his mochaccino
isn’t creamy enough, and a guy

on Facebook calls me a “libtard,”
tells me to “cry harder.”

I post a picture of a child
terrorized by ICE,

face-down, hands zip-tied,
tell him I will.

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Tina Barry is the author of I Tell Henrietta (Aim Higher, Inc., 2024), Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing, 2019) and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in New Verse News, Rattle, Verse Daily, ONE ART, SWWIM, Gyroscope, and other journals. She teaches at The Poetry Barn and Writers[.]com.

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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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