Flying Island

Across St. Martin Bay M. J. Arcangelini The two tall towers of the Mackinac Bridge stand fuzzy, but visible, on the horizon line. This first frosty morning of the season the water appears still as a freeze frame, but that will come later, with the snow, for now the  motion across the surface of St. Martin Bay  remains observable, a liquid shiver, anticipating the cold which will soon convert it all to ice, solid open space for snowmobiles and hockey teams, where coyotes may consume their kills in peace. In this shrinking meantime, on this calm morning the water is a simple zen mantra muttering itself to the gentle breeze, offering peace to even the most troubled of souls, if they will have it. M. J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini’s work has been published in many magazines, online journals, and anthologies, the most recent of which is “Pawning My Sins” (Luchador Press, 2022) and “Fierce Kisses” (Squares & Rebels Press, 2024).

Which reminds me Rebecca Mueller I carry a spoon in my purse to eat yogurt on the way to yoga. It reminds me of the silverware in my mother’s kitchen drawer, which, with chewed-up edges, reminds me of my mother’s kitchen sink, which reminds me of her garbage disposal which ate not only the food scraps but the silverware that made raucous sounds when a piece rattled around in it until she was able to reach the switch which was under the sink which reminds me of my father who built the house and, strangely, put the switch  under the sink, not on the wall next to the sink, which reminds me of my father in his years of dementia who dismantled one of the toilets in the house and laid the pieces of pipes with u-turns, the screws and nuts and bolts out on the floor  and forgot about them, until he noticed them again and, having forgotten how to put them back together again using all the pieces, instead joined the u-pipes with rubber bands, leaving the nuts and bolts on the floor, whi...

Florist’s Dream: The Flood Natalie Solmer filling the cold buckets I’m inside the cooler everywhere is the cooler cutting red roses in the black-walled cooler it’s all chiaroscuro in a big grocery store I’m trying to keep up there’s a flood suddenly in the store my lover’s family: his mother, sister visiting from Jamaica, we’re swimming through the flood I’m carrying the babies they brought I lose one like a bouquet of roses floating away I wake in my own mother’s home I’m away from my lover in real life the great flood still killing down in the mountains where I learned life in a floral shop, my youth wiped out in Asheville streets the mountains of my old love 4:30am, I slip back down back into sleep Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked for many years as a horticulturalist and florist and is now an Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She also founded and edits The Indianapolis R...

Gone:  for my stepfather Antonia Matthew Not his long coffin carried up the aisle, not the closing of the green velvet curtain as the coffin slid away, not the placing of his plain urn beside my mother's in the dark earth but the single bed, empty and neat, tells me he is gone. The cream counterpane is smoothed over the pillow, down the sides of the bed I used to help my mother make when it faced the window and morning sun brightened the white sheets, two terriers scurrying under our feet. Now the curtains are half drawn, the bed faces the door where one old dog lies waiting. There are so many places he is not:     the long dining room table     head bent towards us     to catch our conversations;     his old blue chair by the fireplace,     for an after-dinner nap, newspaper     crumpled on his knee;     by the asparagus beds   ...

Containers Sarah Seybold I keep thinking about the plastic bag. The plastic bag that held her ashes. The one I shook out on the snow in the garden behind her church where I hoped purple crocuses  would grow in early spring.  The one I tried to empty under heavy gray sky, but a film of ash clung to the inside  of that crumpled plastic bag  I put back in the flimsy white box and left, regretfully, on the grimy lid  of a gas station garbage can, overstuffed, outside the Indianapolis airport. I was so flustered and so cold. My mom died, and I didn’t know what to do with these containers that carried her.  Sarah Seybold grew up in Terre Haute, Indiana. Her poems and stories are published or forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review , Chicago Quarterly Review , The Indianapolis Review , Great River Review , Arts & Letters , ZYZZYVA , and elsewhere, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She earned her BA in English from Indiana University Bloom...

      Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 3.28 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Richard Spilman , Alan Hill , Steve Henn , and Shontay Luna . 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  

Old Pictures Nothing says death like old pictures, grey on grey, their subjects stiff as plaster casts in Pompeii, blank stares fixed on eternity— like caryatids bearing the world’s entablature. I wonder,  how long can the living hold that pose before an itch, a sneeze, maybe just boredom smears them into ghosts? And here I am, rummaging boxes, holding a picture up to the light: James, John says the faded ink on the back.  That you’ve no idea who they might be matters not at all.  You’ve shared that thousand mile stare borne the monumental weight of longing, breathed with them the ashen air. Richard Spilman was born and raised in Normal, Illinois, half a block from Main Street, in a house that backed onto Sugar Creek. He has not lived in Normal for quite a while, but it follows him everywhere.

Motherland   See her there, on her ninety-fifth birthday  in her kitchen   nested in her knickknacks,  commemorating dead royals, cats     behind her  a row of clean knives that yearn for meat that must learn to live with ready meals  the occasional touch of a lean tomato  plastic flowers in dustless glassware, that   have pulled themselves to deathless attention    She is the survivor in his pinnacle of bloom of cluttered complicated room  In which she lives   she is beyond career, family, lovers proud, disinterested in her nudging oblivion.   She is the hand of a clock,  turning forward, turning back  with one true function, that she is perfect for  to follow the day, memorialise each   moment  show me how to live  there,  one of the ancients, walking with precision  on cold kitchen tile in her bright blue shoes.   A...