Going Deaf by Mary M. Brown For a while it’s mostly bliss, swimming a lovely, negotiable lake, the hush of small fish, or like resting inside a shell, a turtle, a nutmeat, a swaddled babe, pacified and riding the sweet blurry line between stillness and sleep. But later you wonder whether the lake is a roiling ocean you are alone in with sharks, other predators, and water pressure or a kind of padded cell, you the slow prisoner who wonders if anyone else will show up to bring you poetry or mass or whatever you yearn for—a bible, cigarettes, kisses, a knife in a cake. About the poet: Mary M. Brown lives with her husband, Bill, in Anderson, Indiana. She’s a Hoosier not by birth but by long residence and disposition, and she enjoys proximity to all six of her grandchildren. Retired now, she taught literature and creative writing at Indiana Wesleyan for many years. Her work appears on the Poetry Foundation and the American L
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.