THE POPPY PANDEMIC

by Lynn White

A display featuring 8,000 individually knitted and crocheted poppies has been unveiled at St John's Church in Worcester. It has been created by the local Knit and Knatter group which has worked with the Royal British Legion (RBL) to bring the project to life. —BBC, October 20, 2025

November approached

and a pandemic loomed

of bleeding red poppies

to honour those killed

all victims un-glorious 

in blood red shrouds

with no thanks owing

for peace then or now.

The wake hardly over

the war virus was live

with the slapping of backs

and the drinking of toasts

and the giving of thanks

to the Masters of War

standing masked or unmasked

in the gold and the gore

with the medals and poppies

spread by war after war.

And now we all wait.

And now we still wait.

Wait 

for a white poppied wasteland 

to grow.

White poppies are worn every year by thousands of people across the UK and beyond. They were first produced in 1933 in the aftermath of the First World War, by members of the Co-operative Women's Guild. Many of these women had lost family and friends in the First World War. They wanted to hold on to the key message of Remembrance Day, 'never again'. —Peace Pledge Union.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes.

FROM NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER

by Thomas J. Erickson

“Towering Pine” by Alan Li

There are decades where nothing happens

and there are weeks where decades happen.

                                                    —Lenin

Out near the trout stream,

there is “the Pine Tree”

a towering white pine that somehow

escaped the blade of the lumberjack.

It was a signpost and a beacon

and we could see it from anywhere

while we walked across the plains to fish there

—me, Joe and Dad and Ed

until the dusk called us home for blueberry pie

and trout and potatoes fried in lard.

That was decades ago. Earlier this summer,

the tree started to fall. 

I was afraid it would be down

in a matter of weeks.

Today, though, the tree is still there. By November,

we might still be able to see it on the horizon.

Thomas J. Erickson is an attorney in Milwaukee where he is a member of the Hartford Avenue Poets. He likes to sit in court and write poetry before his cases are called.  His latest poetry book is Cutting the Dusk in Half (Bent Paddle Press, 2022).

WHAT A HORROR MOVIE REALLY LOOKS LIKE

by Gil Hoy

Nightcafé graphic

I got up Wednesday and saw 

She won Vermont. 

Which led me to believe

There was still hope.

 

But then I saw she lost

Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas

California, Colorado, Massachusetts

And all of the rest

 

Which led me to believe 

He must be

A Master Hypnotist.

 

Which led me to believe 

Vermont is special. 

I love Vermont.

 

I thought about Massachusetts. 

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe the one state that 

Voted for McGovern 

Had changed over the past 52 years.

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe it was a good thing 

I moved to Arizona.

 

To get a better handle on things

In a swing state.

 

Which led me to believe 

Maybe I should be talking to as 

Many of his supporters as I can 

To try to understand

Where their brains have gone. 

To look for a cure

Before it’s too late.

 

Which led me to believe

That this kind of thing 

 

Has happened before 

In democracies and the results 

Weren’t pretty. Pretty horrific in fact. 

 

Torture, genocide, politicide. 

 

Which led me to believe 

November might be the most 

Important election in history. 

Do or die we might say.

 

Which led me to believe 

We ought to work like hell 

To protect what we have. 

 

Which led me to believe 

We ought to fight like hell 

‘Til the fight is done. 

 

Which led me to believe 

The good guys need 

To keep on believing.

 

 

Gil Hoy is a Best of the Net nominated Tucson, Arizona poet and writer who studied fiction and poetry at The Writers Studio and at Boston University. Hoy previously received a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Government from Georgetown University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He is a semi-retired trial lawyer and a former four-term elected Brookline, MA Selectman. Hoy’s poetry and fiction have previously appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Chiron Review, Third Wednesday, The Galway Review, Right Hand Pointing, Rusty Truck, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Penmen Review,   Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Bewildering Stories, Literally Stories, The New Verse News, and elsewhere.

NOVEMBER

by Jenna Le

November Rain - Contemporary Blue Abstract Painting by Gordan P. Junior 

November is a mammal, smoke-gray, meek.

Its lumbering body uses weighty flippers

to paddle, making short-lived silver streaks

in the surface of the bay where it’s immersed.

 

It loves the brackish waters of year’s end,

where black-green tufts of daydreams toss and seethe,

the fodder that it munches till it’s fattened

and farts its way up toward the sun to breathe.

 

At times, its blimp-like bulk, incautious, crashes

into our worries, our hurry to complete

our home improvement plans before the fractious

first snow, our human habit to mistreat

 

each other, our campaign ads, our work stress.

It wears those scars from one year to the next.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011) and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), a Second Place winner in the Elgin Awards, and Manatee Lagoon (forthcoming from Acre Books, 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch.

SWING STATE

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Missy Mandel photo on Instagram via Pinterest.

Yard signs shimmy in November’s wind.

They only have to last two more days.

Our deer huddle as snow sifts over their backs.

There is something to see here: the way

they groom each other. No one is in charge.

They browse downed yellow leaves

then chew for hours against the fence, safe

from cars, dogs, the buck that moves through

like he owns the place. Like them, we want

to live out our destinies. To kiss each other’s

velvety ears and bank our spines together

for warmth.  The signs are red, white, blue;

the deer are almost invisible against the fallen

leaves, the pine needles.  If only human congress

could learn deportment from the deer. Winds

through the branches promise nothing. 

No party affiliation. Deer days will be the same. 

Simple. Without rancor.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske spends her time looking out windows, managing two nonprofits (Poetry Society of Michigan and Friends of Poetry in Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Kamala-zoo, as some call it), and hoping to meet Olive Autumn, the newest member of her family.

NOVEMBER 2020

 by Mary Clurman

Wicked Wind by Tracey Savery Davis

i.
the wind blew wicked hard that day
it howled and blew
it rocked the house
though I slept safe in bed

the storm did rise to hit the house
kill flowers through the land
tear branches down, fell ancient trees
yet did not touch my head 

the storm rose up to strike our house
did everything it could 
yet I and thee so deep in sleep
still breathed, slept easily

ii.
that wind had come to seize our day
it danced and whirled and groaned
to wake up all to hold the land
but somehow let us sleep

why would this wind stop at our bed
why would it prowl away
if not that you and I were here
and sought to sleep that day

That wind has come to call on us
leave eddies, pools in hearts
to cry to you to me who dream
You sleep, you welcome death.


Mary Clurman is a retired Montessori teacher and childcare professional in Princeton, NJ, taking her first class in writing poetry. She has only run for school board but remains aggressively progressive.

SUMMER THUNDERSTORMS

by Earl J. Wilcox

Dark clouds hover, hover, hover.
Some are totally nasty. Others phony.
A few are pretty, fluffy, frilly... like
suburban housewives in Philly.

How lovely the sun shines in
Milwaukee—beautiful, spacious
skies, amber waves of grain
brewing an early November tsunami.


Earl J. Wilcox keeps an eye on the weather from South Carolina where storms are predicted.

ON FUTURES FOREVER TANGLED IN A SYSTEM OF FLAWED KNOTS

by Jen Schneider

Florida Rights Restoration Coalition policy coordinators Sharon Madison, right, and Kellie Atterbury present Cynthia Craig with a receipt showing her last court payments have been paid at the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami in early March. (Scott McIntyre/For The Washington Post)

Washington, July 16, 2020 (CNN)The Supreme Court on Thursday said Florida can enforce a law barring ex-felons from voting if they still owe court fines or fees that they are unable to pay associated with their convictions. The unsigned order likely means the law will be in effect for the November election, although the court did not declare the law to be unconstitutional or limit ongoing court challenges. Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissented. "This Court's order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida's primary election simply because they are poor," Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. "This Court's inaction continues a trend of condoning (disenfranchisement)," she added.


She sat in her beat up Chevy on the right-hand side of the road. Window down, radio up. Oldies streamed ribbons of light in the unseasonably cool air. Beatles and Bruce, mainly. Billy Joel, too. Piano Man got her fingers moving. Her left arm dangled, fingers tapped the exterior car door panel. Striking notes a few inches above the door’s deeply dented exterior. Not unlike the beat she’d use for nightly rituals when imprisoned. She and the girls had a system. Tap, Tap, Tap. Intentional pauses and extended rhythms. A form of Morse code—of sorts. Everything was some sort of something in there. Generic and off brand only, of course. No matter. Always made them feel smart - smarter than the system. Only now, she realizes the system had them all along. Damn fines awaiting her release. The others’, too. Piles of unopened envelopes—stacked on the linoleum kitchen table. Most yellowed. Some stained in coffee, soda pop, and a mix of bitter jams. Never did understand how they expected her to pay those fines. Not until she could find work, that is. And even then. Didn’t they know she had babies to feed? Especially after having fed the mouths and egos of grown men for far too long and in far too many ways. Late at night, she and the others would dream of release day. Lofty talk of voting. Making change. In many ways the dreams got them through - and out. No matter most of them should never have been there in the first instance. Out was always the goal. On the other side, where the sun’s rays beat down on open backs, freshly washed heads, and bare feet - no socks, no shackles. Only to once again be silenced. And tied to a system with no conscience. She wasn’t having it. Sat curbside for upwards of six hours on primary day. Planned to do the same come election day. Until she’s welcome behind the curtain. No doubt, she’ll push buttons wherever permitted. Wherever tolerated, too. The passersby didn’t want to hear her talk. She knew it, but spoke no matter. Their voices mattered. Of course they do. As does hers.

When systems lay bare their many flaws and faults that serve only to penalize those for whom change is most needed, and work only to silence the voices of those for whom there is no recourse, and far too must resignation for there is too often no other way, on whom does the opportunity to speak rest and on whom does the responsibility to act fall—yet too often falter?

Signatures are checked
as licenses are confirmed.
Go ahead, Sir. Please.

Old fines resurface
to silence a right to vote.
Not today, Ma’am. No.

Dusty curtains drop
as inside voices whisper.
Seal the status quo.

Red painted fingers
tap as outside voices speak.
Time for change is now.

Jen Schneider is an educator, attorney, and writer. She lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Philadelphia. Her work appears in The Popular Culture Studies Journal, unstamatic, Zingara Poetry Review, Streetlight Magazine, Chaleur Magazine, LSE Review of Books, and other literary and scholarly journals.

NOVEMBER'S FEAST

by A.S. Coomer

Airwaves shocked full of jingoist jingles,
ones & zeroes blinking red & blue & filtering fuzzy hatreds into you.
Sing me to sleep, America. Put me on out, lay me low, down,
somewhere green, somewhere dark, out of my misery.
November’s laid out like a feast, plates & platters of curated misinformation,
prepped prejudices propped up, steaming & juicing, on hot beds of hostility.
The feast seems to be never-ending but not all are invited.
The few will dine then trickle scraps unscrupulously down
to us mangy mutts, waiting with wide eyes & wagging tongues
for whatever it left of the land we stole to begin with.


A.S. Coomer is a native Kentuckian serving out a purgatorial existence somewhere in the Midwest. His work has appeared in over thirty publications. He’s got a handful of novels that need good homes. He also runs a “record label” for poetry.

NEVERMORE

by Susan McLean

Ah, distinctly I remember it was early in November
when the hearth-fire’s dying ember cast dark shadows on the floor.
As dry leaves went whirling, flying, suddenly I heard a sighing
as of someone softly crying, “Let me in! Unlock your door.”
Only this and nothing more.

Had she come again? I wondered.  As the storm clouds flashed and thundered,
in the throes of hope I blundered, flinging wide my chamber door.
But the vision I confronted was not her for whom I hunted.
Grief arrived and joy was blunted: through that doorway I deplore,
hope would enter nevermore.

Like a ghastly apparition on a grim and solemn mission,
an unnerving politician pushed his way into the room,
and I had the premonition that his access code to fission
soon would cause our demolition. Like a specter from the tomb,
in he came: the Trump of Doom.

Susan McLean is an English professor at Southwest Minnesota State University.  Her books of poetry are The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife.  She has also translated over 500 satirical poems of the Latin poet Martial, published as Selected Epigrams by the University of Wisconsin Press.  Her light verse has often appeared in Light and Lighten Up Online.

ON THE BATTLE AND THE RACE

by Rick Mullin

Do you not think an Angel rides in the Whirlwind 
and directs this Storm?—from a letter written to Thomas Jefferson by John Page, July 20, 1776,
quoted by George W. Bush in his first inaugural address, January 20, 2001.

How is the Angel in the Whirlwind fixed
for drumheads come November? Isn’t she
supposed to show us something bright betwixt
the mountain and the river? Pardon me,
but aren’t we all endowed with intuition
in our human state? The crystal liver
of the Angel in the Whirlwind waits
for a replacement on a frozen river-
bank in Pennsylvania. She hates
when she’s strung out in this position.
Once the Angel in the Whirlwind was
in charge and teleology in vogue.
But now, the latest polls get all the buzz.
The drummers and the general go rogue
and disavow the shock of recognition.


Rick Mullin's new poetry collection is Stignatz & the User of Vicenza.

SCOURING

by Elizabeth Kerlikowske

COLORADO SPRINGS — A gun battle erupted inside a Planned Parenthood center here on Friday when a man armed with an assault-style rifle opened fire and began shooting at officers as they rushed to the scene. The authorities reported that three people were killed, a police officer and two civilians, and nine were wounded before the suspect finally surrendered more than five hours after the first shots were fired. —NY Times, Nov. 27, 2015. Photo by ISAIAH J. DOWNING/REUTERS via NY Times

I cannot leave while the wind sings in its cold November voice, exercising spruce limbs above the roof, full of spirits and souls perfecting their escapes: my husband’s colleague, the Paris dead,
unmourned strangers caught up, baffled.

Wind is not what they imagined. Always alive, it blows songbirds from the sills. Smashes streetlights and scatters the shards like leaves.

Below in the ugly solid house, cats sleep on quilts, still, while limbs thrash, cross themselves. Wind is the terrorist with no intention: unequal heating of the earth’s surface, dared by anemometers to blow harder.

Spider webs inside the window and the window tremble. Ghosts of people I once loved make room for the freshly dead. The sound of a train with the force of a bomb lifts our jackets then our bodies and snatches flesh from our faces.

Unsaid fury and unspoken endearments, wind is the thunder of my body breaking up like river ice and letting go. Lost souls from anywhere on the globe pluck at the sleeves of  the living. I am what you will be.  This whirlwind tears boats from their slips, clothes from the line, hope from the future.

Today’s gale prefaces snow with no regard for our journeys; it smoothes our problems into a dull continuous roar and cleanses them of impurities. They return to us, still problems but smoother, speaking a language we don’t understand.


Elizabeth Kerlikowske reports here from time to time on the news here and there.

THE SLIGHT DIFFERENCE OF THINGS

by Dale Ritterbusch





Cloudy and a few drops of rain—
not unusual for November
in Philadelphia; sometimes
the row houses go on forever
in that hazy, particulate light, and no one
walking pays much attention, eyes focused
on the patterning ground.   So when
a young woman stops a couple
on the street and asks Where’s the veterans’
hospital? The man replies, Over there,
three blocks, turn right, the clinic
is right there, can’t miss it; you can
take your pet there any time
during the day or make an appointment.
The woman turns away, says thanks,
a look in her eyes of misunderstanding,
misdirection, maybe traffic noise,
street music, inattention carried
in the air like ash or smoke,
or maybe veterinary hospital
and veterans’ hospital sound so much alike
in the spin of the moment, the way
we want to hear, thinking the decent
thing about everyone, goodness
flowing like a rainbow of oil
in the rainy streets:  just so
careless distractions order the day
as everyone walks apart, rain
chilling even the best intentions,
collars turned up, shoulders hunched
with casual, unconsidered, indifference.


Dale Ritterbusch is the author of two collections of poetry, Lessons Learned (1995) and Far From the Temple of Heaven (2005).  He is a Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he teaches creative writing and literature.  Currently he is the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English & Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy.

WILL WORK FOR FOOD

by Janice D. Soderling

Madrid Homeless from The Sketchbook Blog of Louis Netter

If the 44m people who are unemployed in the mainly rich members of the OECD lived in one country, its population would be similar to Spain's– The Economist

Rain trickles down the pane
in unpredictable paths.
A flyspeck, a chance gust
can alter water's course.

In the cold glare of a department store window,
a coughing man beds down on the sidewalk,
inside a black garbage bag. Only eleven pm
and already November. I think of socialism
as a bird, or a tree; as upward motion, dignity.
It is not a coin tossed grandly in a cup.
Some define it as a moral choice,
a plan for upholding civilization.
Others simply call it fair play.


Janice D. Soderling is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. Recent work at Kin, Prose Poem Project, Origami Poem Project, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Thrice Fiction and forthcoming at American Arts Quarterly, Literary Bohemian, Boston Literary Magazine and Penduline Press. In October 2012, she was featured reader at the Rattle Reading Series (La Cañada/Greater Los Angeles), and special guest at First Wednesday Formal Reading Series (Oakland/Greater San Francisco).