Flying Island

Helicopter Poet by Nancy Pulley I hover over creation, stroke a metaphor as if brushing the hair from my grandson’s forehead, pull a poem back from the hot fire of the critic as I did my son’s fingers from our autumn campfire. I can’t bear for the world to see them through any except a mother’s eyes. How I cherish the fact that they came from me, wonder if I should trust others to love enough to help with their raising. A teacher suggests taking out the heart of one, and a nearly famous poet calls them “sentimental.” Yet try as I might to build poems like bridges, I keep birthing them from some romantic liaison with air, sky, tree, river or the occasional star that falls to earth like a God. Words are not brightly colored Lego blocks to be torn apart and repurposed. They cling to me, my little monkeys, my sweet offspring, daughters coming in from the yard, peach juice glistening on their young, pink lips. Nancy Pulley 's

The Visit by Mary Redman Her eyes, a windless pond, look but do not see as I move to her table in the dining room. Slowly, the focus changes—and she knows it’s me but can no longer say my name. I take her out, slow-footed, for our walk along a certain route, the road encircling her sheltered home. She tries to set a faster pace as if she needs to prove something. No need to hurry, I say. Tongue-tied, she tries to speak, as if she must—to keep me coming back. She may be right. I do not know how to do this sort of small talk. I speak. She nods, pretends to catch my point. Looking at her soft-skinned face, draped jowls, crosshatched lines marking years, I wonder when she changed so. Soon it’s time to leave— We hug as if one of us might break, and I smell soap and Charlie , faded after hours of wearing. I tell her I’ll phone tomorrow. She blinks. I wonder what she thinks

Absence by Roger Pfingston My wife and I miss Carole, our next-door neighbor, and Elmer, also our neighbor who lived across the road. Elmer for his daily banter, a mechanical wizard with mowers and such, a sharp-eyed nonagenarian who roamed his yard, hose in hand, flushing the tunneled darkness of moles uprooting his grass. Carole for her resolve against cancer while tending myriad flowers, her front yard the plotted absence of grass. So recent their going, sometimes we pick up the phone or glance out the window before we catch ourselves. A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as four chapbooks: Earthbound, Singing to the Garden, A Day Marked for Telling, and What’s Gi

Flying Island, the online literary journal of the Indiana Writers Center, is pleased to announce its nominees for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. Vincent Corsaro for "Lost in Translation: A Spaniard With English Ears," January 14, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/01/lost-in-translation-spaniard-with.html Mary M. Brown for "San Souci," August 9, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/08/san-souci-poem-by-mary-m-brown.html Terry Ofner for "Cave Painting," April 1, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/04/cave-painting-poem-by-terry-ofner.html Mary Redman for "Meatless Friday," November 11, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/11/meatless-fridays-poem-by-mary-redman.html Mary Sexson for "Her Addiction," January 21, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/01/her-addiction-3-poems-by-mary-sexson.html Congratulations and good luck to

What the Body Does to Us in Time by Norbert Krapf Where does all the pain come from? Those knobs at the base of the thumbs that pulse and make it hard to open anything screwed tight. And those noises the shoulder joints make when we lift our arms? The dimming of our eyes and the disappearance of moisture in them that once lubricated vision? Those rude noises that more easily escape the apertures we’d rather not name? And what about those names that escape us so easily now? I mean even of people we still know we like. Oh and those appointments we are obliged to keep, who wrote them down in such illegible script on the wrong days or not at all anywhere? And the sweet flowers we have loved so long, why can’t they be polite enough to whisper their euphonious names in our wide-open ears? And love, why do we so seldom understand what the other is saying and become irritated by the irascible and too-loud word What ? Why d