Flying Island

Band Practice at the Park The pipers droned to a stop  and I rolled my drum to silence when the rain came blustering   over the treeline like a swarm  of electric wasps jittering madly  against the shelter’s tin roof so overwhelming a piper struck up  a tune again but the pipe’s sound  was drowned in the howl around us ancient sound eating ancient sound   until suddenly the storm whimpered away  in a second’s span it turned to drizzle  and then dried as the sun cut clouds  around the horizon and then  a rainbow arced up and doubled  not just across the sky but from  the cornpatch across the lot  like an otherworldly waterfall crashing  quietly among Indiana’s greenness the colors rushing from and falling into  the glistening golden ears of corn.  Samuel Franklin is the author of two books of poetry: Bright Soil, Dark Sun (2019) and The God of Happiness (2016). He resides in Bloomington, Indiana, where he enjoys making useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests to h

Growing Up Gay in Greene County Indiana boys shoot hoops next to barns, in gravel driveways,  in the high school gym. They play shirts vs. skins, the smell of leather and dirt still faint on their hands after scrubbing. After dark, they hang out in garages, sliding under cars, swiping grease from their faces onto flannel sleeves. They pass metal tools or metal cans, hand to hand, laughing through woodstove smoke. Some walk the river bottoms, hunt squirrel, rabbit, quail, morel, stopping to drop a line in cold water. They can skin and hang  a deer, then skin-the-cat  on the same tree branch. In Indiana, boys grow tall and straight. They clean up for dances and dates, walk, anxious, to the front door, hiding shaky hands behind their backs,  nervously swallowing their hellos. They know how to follow the rules: don’t swim in the stripper pits don’t play on the tracks don’t stay out too late don’t race down backroads don’t veer from the route. Don’t walk into dark cornfields; you might neve

Duck eggs The ducklings would start to appear two months after Easter. More mess than cuteness by then, families abandoned them in Monocacy Park. By summer's end, flotillas of white would raft the creek's rapids. Uneducated orphans, the ducks didn't know how to nest, so when the eggs came, they dropped them in the cool waters where they stood out like alabaster pebbles. My father, with hungry mouths to feed, recognized a welcomed bounty. If the ducks didn't know how to nest, my parents did. There were eight of us by then, a ravenous rabble gobbling up whatever my mother set on the table. So my father started wading the creek collecting the chilled eggs. Most of us feasted on scrambled duck eggs, pumpkin rolls and cakes all enriched with dark orange yolks. Except me. Eggs were supposed to come from chickens and in a box bought at the grocery store. Not a dirty creek. So while my siblings giggled over Mom's gooey chocolate gobs, I glared wondering why she wouldn't

Blueberry Picking We needed this day to remind us of abundance, of cyclical renewal— the mixture of sun and clouds, the air breathable for once, the wild clematis a white lace thick with bees. The drive to the farm leads up a wooded hill past wheat fields turned golden,  hollyhocks, mallows, poppies, the barn where swallows curl by overhead. The blueberry picking is good and children’s voices call out delight to family in the next row as they discover the prize.  Afterwards we walk the path that looks out toward the river, gleaning more time in this place, a moment of pause away from all that troubles this summer— the smoke and heat and floods. Charlotte Melin grew up in Indiana and returns to visit. Recently retired from the University of Minnesota, she lives in Northfield and has published widely about German poetry, the environmental humanities, and teaching.

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 8.25 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Martha Christina , Elaine Fowler Palencia , Chris Dean . Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? For more info on how to submit, see the tab above. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors and Readers

Ornamental When the young sharp shinned hawk lands on the feeder,  the small song birds have already fled. It settles on the top,  immobile, almost  ornamental. Those who know  more than I about  hawks assure me  disappointment is a human emotion, not something a hawk feels, left alone with only sunflower seeds. Martha Christina was born and raised in Indiana, earned a BA in Spanish from IU Bloomington, and married in Beck Chapel there. She now lives in Bristol, RI, but considers herself a Hoosier-at-heart. She has published two full-length collections, Staying Found (Fleur de lis Press) and Against Detachment (Pecan Grove Press), both of which contain poems set in Indiana. Individual poems appear recently in Crab Orchard Review , Star 82 Review, and Tiny Seed Journal . Image: Cyanotype of British Algae by Anna Atkins (1843)

Twilight Lexus “The last car I will ever buy,” you said, and we laughed at this flimsy excuse to spend on luxury, for once in our lives, and drove ninety miles past winter-parched fields to Peoria to be schooled in the new vehicle’s bells and whistles pat the old car goodbye and be handed key fobs we didn’t understand. My father used to say such things— the last suit I will ever buy,  the last big trip we will take, my last lawnmower. He had a PhD in lugubriousness. On the way home, the winter sun sinking, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel  and observed how much of the wall “art”-- boxy cardboard letter files, stoneware jugs, stern ancestors discomfited in oval frames, augers, potato mashers, rusty hand saws,  cast iron cookware, mantel clocks— are still part of our daily lives, and we noted the main demographic:  women in late middle age  eating with an aged parent  who was taking most of the meal home for later and whose liver spots matched ours, and I thought, maybe you were right abou

afternoon gardening I arch my feet, working tendons, bones and joints that seem to be slowly reshaping themselves into gnarled roots. My hands twist and curl more daily; stiff, bulbous knuckles no longer so much fleshy fingers as knotty branches. I pause to stretch, toes dug into earth and arms open to the sky. In the warmth of the sun, I feel the continuity of my Mothers flow through me like sweet sap. As I joyfully sway in the wind, I smile at the thought my body isn't really aging, I'm simply becoming the Family Tree.  Chris Dean , a writer from Indiana, began writing poetry in 2018. They were the featured artist for May at the Columbus Area Arts Council Monthly Open Mic Night. Their work was published in The Whiskey Mule Diner Anthology . Image: Plant forms, an Impression Figure by Margaret Watts Hughes, pigment on glass, date unknown. Courtesy of Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery.