Second Coming No. 472 — May 6, 2026
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by Donald Trump and his fascist regime
Carolyne Wright
ABCs of DJT: WTF?
Anthems of our last-but-least favored nation status force us to
Belt like karaoke-contest losers warming up before the Big Game. Our national
fight-song is un-singable, and in the dawn’s early light we might
Catch our death of cold or end up with some vagrant variant
of the 45 regime’s “hoax” virus we were told to fend off with
draughts not of beakers full of the warm South
but Ivermectin chased with a back of chlorine bleach and
Enhanced with killer instincts’ free-range wild surmise.
Speaking of Big Game, the Dear Leader’s grown-up nepo-spawn
—Felons now in the line of succession—plan to blow millions of tax-payer dollars
flying to Namibia to shoot the last surviving white rhinos in
Game pens, like fish in a barrel. Fake News! brays the wannabe
dick tater tot, as the trophy wife #3 First Lady flashes
Him a glare and hisses that no animals were harmed in the shooting.
Of the mockumentary starring her, that is—at least that’s the
Impression the acting director tried out on the press, but his only experience
was playing a director on TV, and his script was cribbed from the same
Junk-science bafflegab that all the other Tellywood Temps
in the casting pool have memorized. “NO
KINGS IN AMERICA BUT DR. KING!!” he wants to chant, but
he can’t go off-script or off the set to a protest unless he wants to
Lose his security badge, his union card, and his right to vote.
Meanwhile, back at the rancho, the non-native cast is restless, fed up with
Nachos and diet Coke as the only items on the closed-set menu, while
Okay-Boomer wildlife whisperers, aged-out and unpaid for days, herd the flocks
of okapis and gazelles, impalas and wildebeests, and
Prod them to pierce the back lot’s Lion-Sleeps-Tonight quiet with mating
bellows. If only the Epstein-file faithful could sound so convincing, so
Q-Anon convinced. Like the once-illegal First Immigrant boarding Air Force
One to an immigrant kids’ detention camp, with “I
Really Don’t Care. Do U?” scrawled across her jacket, this regime
Stains our Sea to Shining Sea with the petrochemical
Travesties of human domination. Fossil-fuel billionaires rake it in while
Unelected DOGE-boys dodge the oversight committees
and the Hypocrite-in-Chief who wants to ban Vote by Mail
Votes by mail in his dummymandered district for pardoned Proud Boyz
Who don’t walk, they SWAGGAH into offices bought and paid for with
X-numbers of Corporate Personhood’s free-$peech dollars that will in no
time just naturally re-open the Dire Straits of HORMUZ-Z-Z-Z-Z…
You really think we can wake up in time?
Zero possibility in this regime of paralyzing fear and perilizing treason
weasels.
Carolyne Wright is the author of Masquerade: A Memoir in Poetry (Lost Horse Press, 2021) and This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems (Lost Horse, 2017), as well as of 16 earlier books and anthologies of poetry, essays, and translations. She lives in Seattle, where she teaches at Hugo House. Wright has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright U.S. Scholars Program.
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Powerful, Carolyn! 🙏
A brilliant, rhythmic rant! Thank you!