UPON THE BEAUTY OF COLOR

by Anne Herrick

Ducks Likely OK As Trump Admin Dumps Hydrogen Peroxide Into Green Reflecting Pool —HuffPost, June 19, 2026

Days after his administration claimed the pool was actually “crystal clear,” despite an unmistakably green hue, the US president acknowledged issues—and, without evidence, blamed foul play. —The Guardian, June 20, 2026

Who doesn’t agonize over color

for a kitchen, bathroom, house siding,

a fence, the front door? Or

even the color for a pool, to make

it bright, enticing, exciting.

So you try strolling down past doors

and walls in Ireland, Italy, Mexico,  

or find yellows in Van Gogh’s flowers

his blues in Starry Night, perhaps examine

the deep and bright reds of Kahlo,

or even view the wide selection

of Monet’s greens. Some study flags,

like the yellow and blue of Ukraine,

the red, white, and blue of the UK,

or, for that matter, of proudly independent

America—the blue perfect to highlight

a very long pool, a tourist attraction

feting a famous president,

and perfect, too, to invite the beauty

of algae, that emerald green 

celebrating warmth, humidity, and sun.

Yes—such is the power of summer energy,

it gifts green to water, and even peels

blue paint, encouraging new tourists, 

ducks, to fly in for a visit hoping it is a snack

of duckweed, while men and women 

in waders, scoop and scoop, day after day,

until the pool eventually becomes dry.

Until, in fact it will lie still in peace

in its comfortable century-old familiar

worn grey coat.

 

 

Anne Herrick has published a few poems and prose in the US and UK.

A NIGHTMARE OF COLOR

by Dick Altman

 

 

As reports come out across the country of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining Native Americans, a couple dozen New Mexico lawmakers are pushing a bill that would allow tribal citizens to update their state-issued IDs to reflect their enrollment status. House Bill 20 would give people enrolled in a federally recognized tribe the option to request a “distinguishing mark” identifying them as Native American on their driver’s license or other identification cards. A similar law passed in Arizona last year went into effect in January. On a sample license posted online by that state’s Motor Vehicle Division, “Native American” is written on the bottom left side of the card. —New Mexico In Depth, February 12, 2026

Northern New Mexico

In my mind

it begins,

a Pow Wow

of dance,

chant,

drum,

lofting

my Anglo dreams

to heights

of ritual

more ancient

than Columbus.

Despite the festive air,

masked figures,

I don’t

recognize as Native,

badged and holstered,

lurk in the shadows,

beyond

the drum circle—

waiting.

*

I try to sense,

living as I do,

in Indian Country,

what you,

a Native American,

feel like

awakening now

to a face

in the mirror,

that greets

morning’s light,

not with a smile,

but fear

your complexion,

perhaps only a shade

darker than mine,

might find you

in ICE’s

angry grasp,

two steps away

from expulsion.

*

Identity docs,

once sacred sources

of pride,

and connection,

sat vaulted

in your tribal home,

rarely,

if ever,

in need

of exposure,

to the world

outside.

Now,

I’m told,

you dare not leave

the reservation,

without

your paper shields

of origin.

*

Your biggest fear—

how could I not feel

the same—

likely separation

from your children,

an old fear,

dating back

to early last

century,

when federal agents,

as if yesterday,

drag off

Native offspring

to attend

schools,

to acquire

more “whiteness”.

A curriculum

leading often

to forced labor

and early death,

as history’s

numerous

graves attest.

*

I hesitate,

these days,

to stroll

the town square,

birthed

and sustained

by Puebloans

like  yourself,

long before

the arrival

of Europeans.

I reel,

with broken heart,

as ICE grabs you

off the street,

to challenge

your sovereign right,

stretching back

a thousand years,

to call America

home.

 

 

Dick Altman writes in the thin, magical air of Old West’s high desert plains, where, at 7,000 feet, reality and imagination often blur. He is published in the American Journal of Poetry, Santa Fe Literary Review, Fredericksburg Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Landing Zone, Cathexis Northwest Press, Humana Obscura, Haunted Waters Press, and others here and abroad.  His work also appears in the first edition of The New Mexico Anthology of Poetry, published by the New Mexico Museum Press.  Pushcart Prize nominee and poetry winner of Santa Fe New Mexican’s annual literary competition, he has authored over 290 poems, published on four continents.

TRUMP AI GENERATES HIS SECOND INAUGURATION

by Chad Parenteau

Holding, staring at open bible
with no words. He knew it.
God’s law is whatever you want.
 
Behind him, swiftboat Swifties
dressed in handmaiden style,
coats, blouses buttoned to nape.
 
Harem of doting daughters, 
great grab bags of grabbables, 
whole cabinet of nondisclosures.
 
Blonde broken up by added spots
of colored faces, hands in gnarled
prayer, proof they weren’t paid.
 
He swears off to imagined duties 
under a dome of glass as strong
as his faith in this divine design. 

Chad Parenteau hosts Boston's long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and anthologies such as French Connections and Reimagine America. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. Chad generated these AI graphics on behalf of the former guy.

THE SEA CANNOT SPEAK FOR ITSELF

by Renée M. Schell

More than half of the world’s ocean has changed colors in the past 20 years, a phenomenon that is likely driven by climate change, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The study, which analyzes decades’ worth of satellite data, found that 56% of the global ocean—a territory larger than the total land area on Earth—experienced color change between 2002 and 2022. While the researchers didn’t identify an overall pattern, tropical ocean regions near the Equator seem to have become steadily greener over time. (Photo: Edoardo Fornaciari—Getty Images) —Time, July 13, 2023

Fifty-six percent has become green.

Can we still say azure ocean

or blue sea?

 

Now Aqua, the research satellite,

reflects back the lush color

of phytoplankton,

 

tells us with its seeing eye

that for the past twenty years the vast

waters of Earth have been changing 

color.

 

With chlorophyll out of balance,

how can our oceans,

the teeming gallons,

 

survive this attack?

Revert back?

 

 

Renée M. Schell’s debut collection Overtones was published in 2022 by Tourane Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in The New Verse News, Catamaran Literary Reader, Literary Mama, Naugatuck River Review, and other journals. In 2015 she was lead editor for the anthology (AFTER)life: Poems and Stories of the Dead. She taught for seven years at a Title I elementary school in San José, California. 

PRIDE

by Marion Evalee

Carrying a jumbo rainbow flag onto the Salem Common under the rainbow arch are Ken Elie, left and Ed Hurley, right of the group Boston Pride, who turned out to support the North Shore Pride group. Joe Brown photo via The Salem News, June 25, 2023

The great Arc-en-ciel
Is colorless,

Not on the wing.
A heart needs something,

Color needs light,
A flag needs the wind—

Whoever’s eternal
Rebounding breath

Has deadened with the night,
As it often does.

I keep walking
Over what was

The parade grounds
(What will be the Commons

By the time we celebrate
Our independence)

Like an old vet,
Though it’s getting dark.

Marion Evalee, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has appeared in The Amethyst Review, Willows Wept, Survivor Lit, The Boston Compass, Neologism, and Montage. A selection of her poetry is featured in the anthology 14 International Younger Poets (Art and Letters, 2021). She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.

LET HER WEAR GREEN

by Tricia Knoll

Did the ‘Barbie’ Movie Cause a Pink Paint Shortage? The film recreates the famous doll’s brightly colored world—with the help of one specific shade of pink. —Smithsonian, June 8, 2023

Witness a shortage 

of pink paint

from the set design

of a Barbie movie. 

 

Let her wear green

for chlorophyll,

eco-warrior for a hurting

planet short on good sense

 

as cancer drugs are hard

to come by. This rainbow

month colors fly

 

on flagpoles and banners. 

I’m so sick of pink. The only

Barbie I have sits in a wheelchair;

she is a woman of color

 

beautiful color. 

Barbie Fashionistas Doll #166 With Wheelchair & Crimped Brunette Hair

Tricia Knoll is a Vermont poet well beyond Barbie years. Her work appears widely in journals, anthologies, and seven collections—the most recent being One Bent Twig (FutureCycle Press, 2023) which brings together poems about about trees she has planted, loved, or worries about due to climate change.

DOES TIME HAVE COLOR TOO?

by L. Smith

Disgraced Minnesota police officer Kim Potter walked free from prison after serving just 16 months for shooting dead Daunte Wright when she mistook her gun for a Taser during a traffic stop. Potter, 50, was released from Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee in the early hours of Monday morning to serve the remainder of her sentence on supervised release. —The Independent (UK), April 24, 2023

So, does time have color, too?

Why do they get less time for the same offense that, say, we might do?

Is their time more valuable than, say, mine?

I mean, ain’t we living on the same clock? Same timeline? Same century?

Maybe we need to leave the time up to the jury, because the judge is too easily nudged by emotion. Are you sentencing the crime, or are you sentencing the color? Are you sentencing the crime, or are you crying for a mother? Are you sentencing the crime, or are you sympathetic to the other?

 

Is one color more fragile than the other? You know the phrase, right? —"Don’t do the crime,

if you can’t do the time.” Does that not apply for every color?

What? Y’all think we got a time machine? Think time go by for us at warp speed?

Is time not supposed to affect the brother like it does the other?

Y’all don’t age the same, but them years don’t go by no faster for us.

We age on different scales, but them years go by the same. 

 

I thought time was about alignment, about the crime,

about time to match the crime—not the color. Not how sullen one is once seized.

But it seems the brother gets more time than the other because of his color.

Does color determine risk? After all, who has the means to take the most risk?

The brother? Or the other?

 

Or is it: don’t do the crime, unless you got the right color? 

I mean, can y’all meet us in today? Can we at least decide time like we living in the same decade?

Whose family will suffer most under the cloak of the time?

During the absences, the voids, the gaps, the setbacks brought on by the time? Whose family is already behind?

 

Why can’t white time and black time be on the same damn black line?

I didn’t know time had color, too.

I guess time, like fairness, are both abstract, are just a construct. 

Time being obstruct for the fair-skinned,

abundant for the brother, but absent, lightened, or lifted for the other.

Intangible for the other, hard-lived for the brother.

Time itself is colored obtuse.

Color makes time profuse.

For the colored, time is abused.

And in today, time is a noose.

I didn’t know time had color, too.

And since it does, why can’t our time have the color of you?

L. Smith, a New Orleans native, is a writer, multi-certified, English and master reading teacher, who has freelanced for local newspapers. Her poems “Black Man Running” and “Worse Than Rodney King” have also been published in The New Verse News. She has an anthology of poems and prose set to publish spring 2023 that her mother and daughter created space for her to write. She also has begun this blog for writer teachers.

THE ARTIST

by Louise Wilford

Covered in red and blue graffiti, the toppled statue of British politician Edward Colston, who enslaved tens of thousands of people, stood in the city of Bristol, UK for more than 100 years before it was pulled down by angry protesters during a wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the country last summer—after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. Demonstrators used rope to tug the statue from its stone plinth and their bare hands to roll it through the streets and into the murky waters of a nearby harbor as onlookers cheered. Others chanted “Black Lives Matter,” in solidarity with those across the Atlantic dealing with issues of police brutality, systemic racism and complex histories. —The Washington Post, June 4, 2121

She painted Love on a garage roof,

in throbbing streaks of purple-red, the convolutions of a colon.

Sprayed Birth inside a canal bridge arch–metallic mist of bronze and copper,

cream and jungle green—its colours glowing loud as we moved

closer. Joy on a fire-damaged caravan, in orange streaks, fading

at their edge to silver fairy-dust against a woodland midnight.

 

Paintings drifted off around the tow –first drafts, discarded

—or maybe gifts, or threats. A wisp of air, she moved

about the streets, unseen save for the spores that trailed behind,

hand-prints on lamp-posts, splashes on a fence, office windows

and abandoned cars. Tragedy in a bus shelter, thick brown strokes

with an uneven brush; Bliss rolled up a shutter’s sides in jolting yellow

stripes; the turquoise-blue of Hope rubbed on the bricks of an abandoned

warehouse—and Innocence, black as a crow’s wing, sprawling, smug, along

a dry-stone wall.   

 

On the beech-tree avenue in the park, she painted the stretch of Life,

from gold to god, each stage a different tree. Her colours startled

like a kestrel’s swoop, on bollards, awnings, road signs, multi-storey

concrete car-parks. On a crossing, she painted the white stripes shocking

pink. She filled the holes of letters with tiny dots like grains inside an hour-glass;

 

scrawled a Nightmare on an underpass, a Daydream on a council refuse bin;

Ambition on the tall side of a Tesco van, Destruction on the shovel of a JCB.

Peace, soft as sand, perched on picnic tables. She spread her peacock tail

so the hues that churned inside her could escape, Tenderness like a swirl

of oil on a puddle, blood-red Anger, bile-green Envy, the pewter-grey

of Misery, and the sharp vermilion ache of Fear, vinegar shiny as a magpie

feather. Shades and shadows, grit and silk and dust and grease, stirred

and shifted, blended and erased.

 

Until one day, she drenched with the fishbone-white of Death,

a statue of a man whose alchemy created gold from blood and bone.

This man of stone had swaggered in that square for a hundred and fifty years.

Her colours now were spent. She hiccuped out a final few beige coughs,

a gentle sneeze that left a cloud of baby-pink dancing in the sun—and then,

with a flap of her wings, she left.

 

Louise Wilford lives in Yorkshire, UK. Her work has been widely published, most recently in Bandit, English Review, Goats’ Milk, Jaden, Makarelle, POTB, The Fieldstone Review, and Parakeet. In 2020, she won the Arts Quarterly Short Story Prize, the Merefest Poetry Prize, and was awarded a Masters in Creative Writing (Distinction). She is working on a children’s fantasy novel.

BEHOLD

by Geoffrey Aitken

 

the cat

our predatory

suburban

household favourite

cannot change

its spots

the cuttlefish

the octopus

and the squid

like the chameleon

can change colour

now

the automobile

A minimalist industrial signature drives Geoffrey Aitken away from the scene of mental unwellness for the eyes and ears of those without voices. Widely published locally (AUS), and internationally (the UK, US, CAN, CN & FR), he chases ongoing congeniality.

COMPOS[T]ING MYSELF

by Barbara Simmons 

Washington state became the first state to legalize natural organic reduction in May 2019; Colorado followed suit in May 2021; and Oregon became the third state to sanction human composting in June 2021. —Treehugger, August 24, 2021. "The powerful [California] Senate Appropriations Committee has held a bill that would legalize the composting of human remains. The bill, AB 501, was authored by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, and had sailed through the Assembly with a unanimous vote.... Garcia said in a statement. 'This is another sad reminder that we must legalize a more environmentally friendly option like Natural Organic Reduction (NOR) as soon as possible. AB 501 will provide an additional option for California residents that is more environmentally-friendly and gives them another choice for burial.'” —Sacramernto Bee, August 30, 2021. Photo from Recompose, "a public benefit corporation powered by people who believe in changing the current death care paradigm."

I remember times when soil smelled rich,

a kind of coffee bean rich, a kind

of patchouli rich, a rich that flared my nostrils 

scenting the air with inhale more. 

The time we worked our garden soil 

composting it, the elements of peat and perlite

caking fingernails, our prepping

beds for rows and rows of plants

yearning for elements beyond clay. We dreamt

of growing foxglove, ferns and fuchsias,

entwining them with flowers mixing other letters

into soil with pansies, daffodils, impatiens.  

But it was always soil, prepared, that led to color,

soil inhabiting our very blood and bones, 

a deep affinity for dust to dust we have within,

rich dark coffee-colored soil, aromas lifting up and

taking us to early earth when scientists say the smell

was more like rotten eggs, rich with H2S. This richness lives

within me, my body’s future with the possibility of

decomposing into one cubic yard of soil,

along with wood, alfalfa, even straw, all

assisting me along the way to my new form, 

my inert self reduced to fragrant future supplements

for growing flowers after I have gone.

Something to think about, while legislators ponder laws

to handle soil that’s human-sourced. Right now, it’s not

Assembly Bill 501 I’m thinking of; I’m smelling soil, the

rich rich soil that flowers hunger for, the soil that’s fed

my soul, the gardening days when turning over dirt

was very much like leafing through a sacred text, 

when I’ve translated who I’ve been into the earth

from which I’ve come.

Barbara Simmons is a poet who celebrates the many worlds she inhabits using language to explore the ways we remember and envision. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received an MA in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins. As a secondary school English teacher, she revisited texts with students who inspired her thinking about communication's diversity. Retired, she savors smaller parts of life and language, exploring the world's stories in her poetry. Publications have included Santa Clara Review, Hartskill Review, Boston Accent,  The New Verse News, Soul-Lit, Writing it Real Anthologies, Capsule Stories Anthologies, and the Journal of Expressive Writing.  Her book of poetry Offertories: Exclamations and Disequilbriums will appear in 2022.

TO KNOW A MONARCH

by Phyllis Klein

To know it only as a photograph, a memory.

Never to witness again a community of millions clustered 

on Eucalyptus branches, now empty.

These fragile slivers of stained glass

no longer clinging to winter respites.

What is a world that would allow

this extravagant pollinator to die off?

This migrational miracle. 

Rumi says, You were born 

with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?

I want a humanity that weeps 

copiously for this animal who starts off 

in a crawl, shows us how to fly. I want

processions, dirges everywhere,

want to howl over milkweed, bereft, without 

purpose. So much loss. I want to rend my garments.

Burn kaleidoscopes of butterflies into my skin.

What good would that do? Or I could slice

open the sky, so their ghosts torrent down. 

What do I know of softness—my origins 

in an ice-house, in a tradition of cruelty,

of abhorration, torn appendages. Where

are the wings for this? Where the flashes 

of orange slipped through our fingers?

Phyllis Klein’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She is a finalist in the Sweet Poetry Contest, 2017, the Carolyn Forché Humanitarian Poetry Contest, 2019, and the Fischer Prize, 2019. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2018 and again in 2020. She has a new book, The Full Moon Herald  from Grayson Books. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, she sees writing as artistic dialogue between author and readers—an intimate relationship-building process that fosters healing on many levels. 

FIERCE FRAGILE SEASONS

a poem in four parts
by Jill Crainshaw

I

mama cardinal studies me as i stand
in rain-wet morning sunlight

i see fire flash in her feathers
when she flits and flashes

from fencepost to flaming forsythia
nesting in preparation for whatever

springtime color waits to touch the earth

II

sepia-soaked scrapbooks ensconce
human fragilities exposed

i study faces retreating from
fiery colors of aliveness buried

in catacombs where mortal coils
were torn away too soon from butterflies

waiting even now to meet the sunrise

III

night settles down into streets emptied
of laughing children and lingering lovers

spinning cocoons to hide fragile dreams
while the world shuts out a sinister stalker

a brave pinion pushes open a window
slips a lonely song into the silence and hope

throbs in voices that swell together on the breeze

IV

backyard cardinals carry
springtime rhythms in their beaks

wrens domicile in the abandoned eaves
of the church belfry next door

and we humans study yet again how to
weave into our nests fiery threads of hope

longing to color unsettled nights with song


Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.