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.

THE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE THAT MATTERS

by L. Lois

the chill in the air

means the glacier ravines

running down the peaks

jutting above the treeline

to the north

are vertical cuts of white

this bench sits low

comfortably leaning back

with the lake at my feet

the surface broken

by the gentle rippling

of the wind

 

a lone eagle circles

on early spring's

thermal winds

and the cherry blossoms

I passed on my way

are holding fast

in the lingering crispness

distant blue skies are lighter

overhead

coloring is calm

painted solid for peacefulness

rounded white clouds

perch as if to tell

the mountains where they should be

ducks scatter

when the Canadian geese

come in for a noisy

landing

two herons fly by

to the west 

and their rookery's young

New York and Washington on fire

Trump's on criminal trial

Netanyahu plays chess with Hamas and Iran

Putin threatens Ukraine’s future

while Congress dithers on the eve of chaos

everything here

ignores our foolishness

L. Lois lives in an urban hermitage where trauma-informed themes flow during walks by the ocean. She is pivoting through her grandmother-era, figuring out why her bevy of adult children don’t have babies, nor time. Her poems have appeared in Progenitor Journal, In Parentheses, Woodland Pattern and Twisted Vine.

HEAT WAVE

by Richard Schiffman

Heat Wave painting by Ralph White

If sweat were gold, I’ve lost millions. 

If hell were cold, I’d be in heaven.

If heat were meat, I’d feed the world.

If hot were smart, this day’s a bloody genius.

Robin redbreasts with lolling tongues 

are begging for the spare change of rain. 

Today even the fire ants are panting like puppies. 

The dog days of summer, they whimper, they drool.

Pigeons in heat spontaneously combusting,

bridges diving like ducks into rivers, 

green leaves boiling and bubbling from trees, 

trees hawking their shade to the highest bidder.

Still, there is something in me that loves a flame. 

That burns baby burns complacency’s ghetto.

Whose body is grease for its very own pyre.

Whose soul is on fire like a summer in Georgia.

Some seasons are mild, some seasons are fiery

If June kissed the moon, the moon would go loony.

If July were a stud, every mare would come screaming.

When mid-August simmers, the whole world is soup. 

Today only mad dogs and Englishmen are strolling.

And possibly some poets and wandering monks.

Fervid souls, assorted fools. We know who we are.

We know what we’re up to.

Richard Schiffman, based in New York City, is an environmental reporter, poet, and author of two biographies. His poems have appeared on the BBC and on NPR as well as in the Alaska Quarterly, the New Ohio Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Writer’s Almanac, This American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily, and other publications. His first poetry collection What the Dust Doesn't Know was published in 2017 by Salmon Poetry.

ABDUCTED GOLDFISH

by Kenton K. Yee

Dean Young, 1955-2022

In The Art of Recklessness (Graywolf, 2010), the poet Dean Young's exhilarating book-length essay on writing poetry, he repeatedly questions and rejects the idea that the most important thing in writing poetry is an acquired mastery of craft, suggesting that it comes at the expense of intuition, risk-taking, wildness, and negative capability. He writes, exasperatedly and in all caps, "WE ARE MAKING BIRDS, NOT BIRDCAGES!" —Michael Dumanis, Editor of Bennington Review

I ping. I ping love.

 

I ping love and I love pings.

Here’s one from the library:

Due in two.

 

Love me my deadlines.

Ping me butter melting,

cantaloupe ripening,

gasps quickening.

 

Dean Young.

 

Ducks.

 

Abduct.

 

I’m waiting for the gulls to return my goldfish.

I’m waiting for squirrels to sing like nightingales,

daisies to bear me raspberries,

and bonsai trunks or cornflakes.

I’m waiting for bugles to herald the dying of salmon.

 

All this sun and all that sun.

The melting hours. Starlight. Dew.

The lackadaisical one

who settles for steam turned to rice.

Author’s Note: This poem is in memory of Dean Young, who passed away a few days ago. When I first took up poetry, I didn't know what to make of Dean Young and his rich language and ranging movements. Now, he's become one of my poetry role models.

Kenton K. Yee recently placed poetry in Constellations, Plume Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Indianapolis Review, Matter, Lily Poetry Review, and Pembroke Magazine, among others. An Iowa Summer Poetry Workshop alumnus, he writes from northern California.

LOOKING BACK AT THE TIME . . .

SENATOR JEFF FLAKE ASKED SUPREME COURT NOMINEE NEIL GORSUCH WHETHER HE’D RATHER FIGHT 100 DUCK-SIZED HORSES OR ONE HORSE-SIZED DUCK

by Kathleen Latham

In hindsight, it seems the Senator was onto something, since Washington today is certainly overrun by plenty of duck-size horses—all of them tripping the tourists and shitting on monuments and generally wreaking havoc in the heart of democracy—which is bad, I agree, and incredibly frustrating, but not nearly as disturbing as that one gelding-sized, orange-feathered, fowl-mouthed lame duck currently digging for grubs in the Rose Garden, snapping at shadows with his wedge-shaped bill while he tramples the truth with his big, webbed feet and scares the hell out of the rest of the free world while simultaneously making them laugh at us, which, I suppose, was the original intent of the question? I’m sure three years ago it was tempting to make puns like Stop ducking the issue before playfully pointing out that you can remove half of a duck’s brain without any obvious difference in its behavior or that ducks can turn their heads completely backwards to preen themselves—both facts which now seem remarkably prescient, although the latter will undoubtedly lead to unfortunate thoughts of The Exorcist. And speaking of movies, doesn’t it feel like Washington has become the rich kids’ lunch table in a John Hughes’ film, if the rich kids were out of touch birdbrains who laugh at other people’s misery while the entire school is going to shit—a comparison that inevitably brings to mind Duckie in Pretty in Pink. And maybe that’s what we need right now, a loveable poor man who lip syncs "Try a Little Tenderness," or maybe it’s just tenderness we need or hope or the simple recognition that this isn’t funny anymore because real lives are at stake and our country is being torn apart and when I try to understand how anyone could possibly believe more of the same is a good idea, I’m reminded of Justice Gorsuch’s response three years ago to the above-mentioned duck-themed question and strangely, my answer is the same: I’m very rarely at a loss for words, but you got me.

Kathleen Latham is a poet and short fiction writer living outside of Boston, MA whose work has appeared in Fictive Dream, River Heron Review’s Poetry Now issue, Chestnut Review, Constellations, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Flash Fiction Magazine among others. She can be found on social media as @lathamwithapen.

PLEDGING ALLEGIANCE

by Thomas R. Smith

Late afternoon sun on snow. Intense
flare concentrated in the west, skimming
cold shadows pooling below the dam.
On the path I stop a moment to commiserate
with a friend, both of us scalded by
the daily piss shower out of the White House.
Still January and the open river
hosts hundreds of ducks, geese, and swans. The new
EPA head listens to oil and coal
companies but not the community
of beings. I see my neighbors the water-
birds almost every day. I must owe them
something. Does money and power have
the right to disregard their fate? Ryan
and Pence stand smirking behind T***p while
the lit fuse sparks past their ankles.
Do they really believe that only
the President will be burned? Things can
get corrupted so inconspicuously—
a file, water, air, democracy—that we often
notice only when the screen’s gone blank.
The body politic knows it’s infected,
will the immune system mobilize?
The purveyors of “alternate facts” tried to
smear Rachel Carson too.  Heroically
she saved us from ourselves. Do we have it
in us to save us from ourselves this time?
I look out past the fliers and swimmers
at home on the river, toward the sun’s
setting splendor.  Our twilight will be
uglier, like the men at the top. To them
say, Earth first! You can’t be my government
if you won’t be the government of the geese.


Thomas R. Smith has had hundreds of poems published on three continents.  In the United States, his poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  His poems were included in Editor's Choice II (The Spirit That Moves Us Press), a selection of the best of the American small press, and in The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner).  His work has reached wide national audiences on Garrison Keillor's public radio show Writer's Almanac and former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's syndicated newspaper column, American Life in Poetry. His most recent book of poems is The Glory from Red Dragonfly Press.

IMPOSSIBLE TO PAINT, NATURE PERSISTS

by Connolly Ryan

Image credit: suzym / 123RF Stock Photo

That stillness that fills you
larger than up,
smaller than down,
like circles of ducks
upon circles—micro-replicas
of any inkling
imagined or un-,
awash with motionlessness
and the commotion thereof.

The way the illumined blob
of sunlight elongates
in increments across the lake
is miraculous.
It’s as if God is inside
everything that is outside.

Today in Boston
a pair of bombs
at the Marathon finish-line—
shattered glass, splattered blood--
left three dead, a hundred wounded,
de-limbed and counting—
the city and the terror
of its ways. But here
in Look Park, a beaver
nibbles for decades
on a long twig, rapid twitchy
lovebites creating tiny plosions
in the water, then a bird-blur,
possibly a phoebe,
snags a dragonfly
in the throes of aerial cursive.

News of the blast
creeps through the park,
insinuating its menace
upon the pastoral strollers—
rumors of terror,
homegrown or imported,
possibly of cells, obligingly abound.

But the ducks, the phoebe, the beaver
(who, with a perfect oily sleek flip
vanishes then resurfaces
twenty yards away, new to itself)
and the lake,
with signature resignation,
sustain their modest ecstacy,
wisely oblivious
to the spectacular unkindness
unique to mankind: the only
entity to whom
God and Love
are intangible.


Connolly Ryan was born in Greenwich Village, New York in 1967. He is currently a professor of literature at University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he was thrice a finalist for the Distinguished Teaching Award. His visceral and witty poetry has been published in various journals including Bateau, Ditch, Umbrella, Citron, Satire, Scythe, Slope, Meat For Tea, Pannax Index, Satire and Old Crow. He is also a multiple Pushcart nominee. He has two finished Manuscripts: Fort Polio and The Uncle Becky Chronicles.