Second Coming No. 205 — August 12, 2025
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by Donald Trump and his fascist regime
Amy Holman
Born Ready
Chick pukekos start life with long legs and
ginormous feet, the gene’s adaptation
to sinking ground. Brought up in social swirls,
we see them bonded and competitive.
One of these sprinters will be dominant.
Watch them rush, en masse: arts advocates off
the bus to DC, in their flightless strides
toward lawmakers to save their funding stakes
in the NEA. So last century,
this simile, a charge of innocence.
Pukeko chicks are Gorey crows on stilts,
puffs of black laundry lint lifted in air.
They will know how to fly before they’re grown.
They can depart across the churning seas.
Amy Holman is the author of the poetry collections Captive (Saddle Road Press, 2023) and Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010), as well as four chapbooks and a writer’s guide. She’s had a poem in The Best American Poetry, and five on Verse Daily. She’s had two flash published recently: creative nonfiction in Airplane Reading and fiction in -ette review. Poems from Captive are up at the digital anthology Poets For Science. Pine Hills Review posted a poem in early May, and poems are imminent in Gargoyle and The Under Review. She writes the newsletter What Where: Literary Journals, and is one of the poetry editors at The Westchester Review.
Second Coming is a publication of Indolent Books, a haven for poets over 50 without a first book and a welcoming space for women, people of color, queer and trans writers, and others who do not fit molds or conform to expectations.
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Good one!
Love the turns in this sonnet!