COLOR OF THE YEAR

by Pepper Trail

“A shade of white will be the defining color of the next year.” —The New York Times, December 4, 2025

 

“A lofty white 

whose aerated 

presence acts 

as a whisper 

     of calm 

          and peace 

               in a noisy world.”

 

Let us blank

out all the noise

the alien rhythms

the clashing, chaotic colors

of the needful, striving world

 

The many shades of browns and blacks

(containing all colors, muddled, mongrel)

are too confusing to distinguish

so let them be bleached or thrown away

leaving us uniform, monotone, pure

 

This is our ideal: nothing at all 

no mark upon your page

no disturbance in your minds

the white of the vaporous clouds

of the snow, burying all in stillness

 

Do not call it blindness

it is merely the absence of anything to see

and so this is our choice for the Color of the Year

and the next, and the next, this white

ever more perfect, more perfectly… nothing

Pepper Trail is a poet and naturalist based in Ashland, Oregon. His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Atlanta Review, Spillway, Kyoto Journal, Cascadia Review, and other publications, and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards. His collection Cascade-Siskiyou was a finalist for the 2016 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

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.

WE’RE BACK!

by Karen Marker

“We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital,” [Stephen] Miller told the crowd near Shake Shack inside Union Station. “And let’s just also address another thing. All these demonstrators you’ve seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been. And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black. So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old.” —The Hill, August 20, 2025

All of us old white hippies 

are showing up at Union Station 

Shake Shack and every

street corner

we don’t want to miss 

a love in sit in heckle

right here wherever

they are we are 

wearing our long gray

hair in braids 

like Patti Smith

singing "People Have the Power"
we’re blowing smoke rings

into their smirking faces

as they buy their burgers

for the National Guard

here so this won’t be another

Kent State we’ve come to town 

in massive numbers rocking

not rolling over
we’re wearing our tie die

tee shirts in protest chanting

Hey Hey We’re the Hippies 

Come back and we’re not alone 

look closer you’ll see we’re rainbow

colored, we’re stripping off 

their vulgar masks

smacking their faces with kisses
this is just the beginning

we’re making it a race

to the finish see what happens 

when we all get naked

let our full glory 

be exposed that’s how 

we’ll catch them 

off guard take over

by giving away the Abundance 

of our flourishing gardens 

throwing bouquets of chard and roses

Oakland, CA poet Karen Marker is a social activist and retired school psychologist whose poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and journals. Her first poetry book Beneath the Blue Umbrella came out recently with Finishing Line Press. She has recently been engaged in a project of writing a poem a day off hope and protest in response to the news. The presence of the  national guard in our cities has recalled her experience as 9th grader at Kent State University High School where she was witness to the horrors of May 4th. Her poetry is in the May 4th Archive at KSU. 

MASS SHOOTING #2

E Pasadena Ave and Industrial Ave, Flint, MI, July 27, 2025

by Ron Riekki

“Dandelions bare art of

endurance”

—Semaj Brown, 

First Poet Laureate of Flint, Michigan,

“Black Dandelion” 

            i

 

4 injured, 1 killed, across from a church surrounded by endless fence and on the other side of the fence    concrete           and on the other side of the church more concrete  with piles of rubble fenced off and empty parking spots overgrown with crushed weeds and church windows you can’t see into and           120 air quality Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups        and a NOTICE WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR VEHICLES OR PERSONAL ITEMS on the wall of the building that’s painted pure black jet black onyx black charcoal black the entire building black    and the white-silver moon in the sky cut in half   in the smog sky           and crickets crickets crickets mixed with distant traffic and  the losing wind            and the wall is black every bit of it black with black wall and black garbage can with a full black plastic bag and a big black bucket near the painted black front door with thick white-silver locks thick locks and a gated door and no one to ask questions to nobody no bodies nothing just crickets and clouds and lights of the church and distant loud-soft traffic and a train warns its arrival somewhere on the horizon green overtaking the white-silver concrete and a telephone wire swings in the wind lazily and someone was killed here right here  a long thin orange construction cone leans against the fence like it’s having a smoke            and the wind and the crickets and there is no one anywhere and you feel the sin of corporate decay and the sick concrete clouds and the desperate crickets

 

 

            ii

 

down the street an absolutely massive sign for LEGACY FUNERAL CHAPEL

 

 

            iii

 

and before leaving

 

a security guard

alone

in a white car

on the other side

 

of a fence

 

and I pull over

and I walk up

to the fence

and he gets out

 

and walks up

 

to the fence

and we talk

through the fence

and he’s in white-

 

silver uniform

 

and he’s white

and it’s a black

neighborhood

and he’s white

 

and I ask him

 

if he knows

about the mass

shooting

and he says,

 

“I can’t speak

 

to any journalists

or lawyers”

and I tell him

I’m not trying

 

to solve a murder.

 

I’m trying to

solve Murder.

I don’t say that.

I think that.

 

I’m trying to

 

understand

why there’s so

much violence.

I say that.

 

I tell him

 

he doesn’t have

to talk about

the murder,

but can just talk

 

about how we

 

lessen the violence,

as a human,

how do we lessen

the violence

 

and he says,

 

“I’m not allowed

to comment”

and he’s robotic

and white and

 

I tell him how

 

when I’ve talked

with white people

in the black neighbor-

hoods where

 

the shootings

 

are taking place,

the white people

are corporate

and tell me

 

they’re corporate

 

and tell me

they can’t speak,

that I need to speak

to the police,

 

and I tell him

 

that the black people

I talk with

talk

because

 

they’re invested

 

in helping their

community

and I ask him

if the white people

 

who are corporate

 

aren’t invested

in black communities

and so that’s why

they have nothing

 

to say

 

and he walks away

silently

and gets in his

white security

 

vehicle

 

and drives away

and he is protecting—

seriously?—

what looks like

 

a thousand white

 

vans

all in rows

in a fenced in

parking lot,

 

all of these

 

white white white

vans, a comical

amount of white

vans

 

that he’s protecting,

 

and he fades away

into the night

and I look at him

fading

 

through the fence

 

that seems to be

everywhere

and how it protects

nothing

Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.

NEWCOMER BUMMER

by Felicia Nimue Ackerman

— The New York Times, May 9, 2025

If you're African and white,

Trump is keen to ease your plight.

If you lack this racial clout,

Trump is keen to keep you out.

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown University and has around 340 poems in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, Better Than Starbucks, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Down in the Dirt, The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Free Inquiry, Light Poetry Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Daily News, and The New York Times. She has also had twelve previous poems in The New Verse News.

THE GOOD NEWS

by Joanne De Simone Reynolds

AI-generated image from Dreamstime.

for

billions:

 

white

bird

 

column 

of 

smoke:

 

America’s

leonine

antidote

 

to

vice

 

injustices 

 

+ dogedom 

 

Joanne De Simone Reynolds watches the progress of the nation and the world from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean. Some of her work can be viewed at http://theumbrellaarts.org/

THE MILLER'S TALE

by Lynnie Gobeille

I tend to be on the lighter side of white,

don’t often get singled out—

in fact at 74 I am barely noticed.

I can walk down (mostly) any street and feel safe.

No fear of being deported.

I have no tattoo that would taunt them.

No affiliation with some unseen gang.

No radical disclaimer required

I can roam my country freely.

Little do they know of my SDS ancient background—

Or my scars from protests long since past.

I tend to be on the lighter shade of pale.

Students for a Democratic Society button circa 1965

Lynnie Gobeille is passionate about poetry. She is one of the cofounders/editors of The Origami Poems Project, a world wide “free poetry event.” She was the Editor of the Providence Journal Poetry Corner (St.Cty Section). Her poetry has been published online & in numerous journals. Her work has also been read on NPR & ELFIN radio in England. She currently works at her local Library, with fingers crossed that the funding continues to keep the doors open.

SHE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE A U-TURN

by Beth Fox

Photo by Kevin Bermingham at Dreamstime.

She’s black, she’s white—
she’s a white-throated swift
moving so quickly I barely see
the male on her back as 
she barrels toward earth
in a courtship spin—
swerving at the point 
of impact, then 
hurtling upward 
again to become 
a speck in the sky.
(Black and white,
           dark and light—)
The nest—
a cup of moss and twigs
glued to the side of a sheer cliff
with saliva.
 
(I was once convinced
    that dark news 
          was really light—)
Fifty trips a day to care for chicks, 
feeding them balls of insects… instincts
as true as their flight.
 
Before dark times, I could tell
black from white… I will again, when
I can see through these reddened eyes…
    Will I/will we turn back in time   
          to see
     the brilliant blue sky?


A lover of the outdoors, Beth Fox was a finalist in four New England poetry contests and is widely published in New England. She helped seniors publish their work in an anthology, Other Voices, Other Lives. Her chapbook Reaching for the Nightingale is available at Finishing Line Press. Beth lives in Wolfeboro, NH.

TO PRESIDENT TRUMP WHO IS THROWING HIS WEIGHT BEHIND THE DEATH PENALTY

by CaLokie

Text of the diktus.

Why

do we kill people 

who kill people

to show 

that killing people

is wrong

and why,

if we kill people 

who kill people

to show

that killing people 

is wrong

are we four times more likely 

to kill people 

who kill white people

to show 

that killing white people

is wrong

than we are people 

who kill black people 

to show

that killing black people

is wrong

and why,

if killing people who kill people

deter people 

from killing people

do countries

who kill people who kill people

to show 

that killing people is wrong

have more 

people who kill people

than countries who imprison 

people who kill people

to show that 

killing people is wrong

and why,

if we spend six times more 

to kill people 

who kill people

than we do when we 

imprison without parole people 

who kill people

and why,

if killing people who kill people

deter people 

from killing people

do countries

who kill people who kill people

to show 

that killing is wrong

have more 

people who kill people

than countries who imprison 

people who kill people

to show that 

killing is wrong

and why,

if our country has so many 

people who believe in God

and so glories in the cross 

on which 

Jesus was tortured

and killed 

but that cross was how  

Roman people tortured

and killed people 

who they believed had done 

something wrong 

and why,

if you can’t fight fire

with fire

and two wrongs

don’t make

a right

and though 

sometimes subsequent 

evidence shows 

the people executed 

for killing people 

did not kill the people 

for which they 

had been convicted 

and since we are 

not GOD

but people,

why

do we kill people 

who kill people

to show 

that killing people

is wrong?

Author’s note: This poem is not based on an old Barbra Streisand song but from a bumper sticker asking the question, “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”

Editor’s note: The bumper sticker our poet recalls quotes a lyric from Holly Near’s 1980 song “Foolish Notion.”

 

Carl Stilwell (aka CaLokie) is a retired teacher who taught for over 30 years in the Los Angeles Unified school District and participated in UTLA’s teachers’ strikes in 1970 and 1989. He was born during the depression in Oklahoma and came to California in 1959 and has lived there ever since. His pen name was inspired by the Joads struggle for survival in The Grapes of Wrath and the songs and life of Woody Guthrie. He has poems published in Altadena Poetry Review, Blue Collar Review, Four Feather’s Press, Lummox, Pearl, Prism, Revolutionary Poets Brigade--Los Angeles, Rise Up, Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal, The Sparring Artists.