Jack-O'-Lantern Jack of all trades, of shivering, shriveling Indiana summer days & nights, the jagged mouth spews forth orange shadows-- grins syrupy candy corn sweetness, the hollowed head a luminous void, its moist, fibrous, pulpy rind a house for a blackening candle stub--flickering Cinderella, her askew ballgown petticoats reeking soot & ash--hot molten striptease of dripping wax, the jack-o'-lantern a leering promise of plump, uncouth autumn days--pumpkin seeds spilling into meat grinders of the fairy-taled imagination. Hiromi Yoshida , one of Bloomington’s finest and most outspoken poets, was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize. Her poems have been published in The Indianapolis Review, The Asian American Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Evergreen Review, and The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society. She is the author of Joyce & Jung: The "Four Stages of Eroticism" in
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.