Flying Island

Moths and hummingbirds Little things. The way airborne swarms of dust find their way, like moths, to the stale light of mid-afternoon sun filtering through a window, a wobbly pile of books, a scattering of papers, a lake collecting rain, always remind me of the summer I spent trying to clean out Maggie Harper’s house and barn. I was sixteen. The lilacs were still in bloom, but on their way out, swooning over the backyard fence. Life smelled of cut grass, distant grill fires, honeysuckle dizzying the air. Summers still felt almost endless, like the slow roll of a wave, not like the hummingbirds, fluttering, floating, pulsing, then disappearing before you even notice. Logan Chace received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Hollins University, and currently teaches English and Creative Writing to high school students in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Previous publications include Versal Magazine , The Meadow , Plain Spoke , THAT Literary Review , The Bookends Review , Buddy, Brushf

            In Memoriam for Elie Wiesel Slowly the minister read a description of hell, an exercise, he said, in the reach of God, his realm. It was not the squalid grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch nor Cotton Mather’s flame and ash nor even Dante’s cruelly calibrated fosse. It was a child thrashing at the end of a rope his hollow, sallow frame too slight to quit the agony of Auschwitz. Minutes passed. More. An anguished voice cried from the yard Where is God? Where is God? God is here. Later, after bacon and eggs, I leafed quickly past the inked accounts of barrel bombs of bruised and battered children and the wretched petty deaths of local homicides until at last I reached the crossword puzzle and did not weep.     Martin DeAgostino is a late-life convert to poetry whose only defense is that he got there as soon as he could. He lives in Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis.

     White Women’s Tears                     for Felicia We have fallen at the slightest hint of black-boy threat or smoky censure wafting its way from the candid mouth of any woman of color. We are reflex. We seek redress. We police pale cheeks, congregating in the center of some nerve. Call us any damsels’ names you wish: Sarah, Mary, Carolyn. In their distress, our dew drops from the glands of fear, clear as any whistle or stolen spotlight. Look how we whet the appetites of men we weren’t designed to indict. Our sister is spit. We never run out. Julie L. Moore , a Best of the Net and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon , which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review , Alaska Quarterly Review , Image , New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily , Prai

  “Go for the Eyes!”     Michael Gawdzik Let’s face it, eyes cause nothing but trouble…Medusa, the Eye of Sauron, Polyphemus, The Three Stooges. Heck, if Indiana Jones hadn’t controlled his peepers when the ark was causing trouble, we would’ve never seen him and Sean Connery punch Nazis in the desert. But in the galaxy of prose, we have another issue, the dreaded “I.” It just sits there, resting against whatever punctuation may be next to it, or it just teeters, haplessly, supported by whatever words go near it. A light breeze can turn it into an underscore in an instant.  It is elusive and boring and wholly dependent on the other twenty-five letters in the alphabet to make it remotely interesting.  As writers – specifically creative non-fiction writers – we have become too dependent on this vertical line to do a lot of work for us. As a non-fiction editor, a CNF reader for multiple lit mags, and a writer myself, nothing twists my stomach more than seeing an underdeveloped  “I.” Writer

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 8.22 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have three pieces to share in poetry. We hope you enjoy this issue. Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? Submissions are free through September! For more info on how to submit, see the tab above. Links to each piece in this edition below. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors and Readers POETRY Skye Nicholson, "August" Megan Bell, "Punchy & Pissed" Kevin LeMaster, "Rain" Are you a writer who is from the Midwest or has close ties to the Midwest? We'd love to read your work. Submissions info in the tab above.  Support the Indiana Writers Center!

August There is a rip in the clouds where morning  begins, in slow motion, to unwrap  the night, shifting the sky from coal  to ash to sand, telling the quick brown bat  to go home. Air remains motionless, cowering  in silence as daylight presses its hot,  heavy body against the earth, a wet moan  sliding up my neck, mosquitoes like fingertips  teasing where they don’t belong.     Skye Nicholson is a part-time poet and founder and CEO of Soul's Truth Coaching, empowerment coaching services for women. She lives in Columbus, Indiana, with her husband and two children. Her first book of collected works, published December 2021, is entitled Unexpected Alchemy: Poems of Addiction and Awakening .

Punchy & Pissed I was born, quickly, in a thunderstorm—a  red, mottled projectile. Thunder and lightning shook the walls as the doctor held my single mother’s flesh.   I was born in 1979 to hillbilly shame—a backward blame. Even the Tribune couldn’t be bothered with my birth.    I was born in a rusted automobile with a half tank of gas and a hole in the floor. The carvings scratched in the door read Jesus Save s! I had heard bastards didn’t count.   I was born wailing, railing, at our socio-economic class, shouting into the wind, into the void, to anyone who would listen. I would be different! I would not stand on the backs of my ancestors–those ancient idiots. I would rip their heads off and roar.    I was born to a house full of German women. Themselves, born on the hard side of life—they had piss in their souls. Cause grandpa had whiskey on his breath and meanness in his fist. And grandma was a hag with a cigarette coated tongue. But, like our house, their frames were sturdy.  T

Rain Momma always said you can smell the rain before it even hits pavement before the sirens blare with full wiper clearing off a torrent of tears Momma wasn’t there the day you gasped for a breath that almost never came, when your sister said you looked like momma right before she never came home, right before she hollered help me to our son five hundred miles away, but frankly to me, you never looked more beautiful than when I touched your hand and let them take you and when they flipped on the flashing lights, I knew home was just as far as our son was the day Momma died, the day our yard was a river and you were the bridge   Kevin LeMaster lives in South Shore, Kentucky. His poems have been found at SheilaNaGig online, The Slipstream , Triggerfish Critical Review , Route 7 Review , West Trade Review , The Big Window Review , Santa Clara Review Dead Skunk Magazine and others. He has work forthcoming in Internet Void , Main Street Rag and Coffin Bell Journal. His work in Rubic