Flying Island

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 6.27 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Curtis L. Crisler , Megan Bell , and Matthew Freeman . 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

My Debbie Littlejohn Says…         At this juncture, just lie to me. Tell me that the poinsettias will blossom on Friday. That the soil will be rich in minerals and runoff. Tell me that the bodies slapping will render good sex. Our lips moist with want and tongues panting. Just lie that the smile on your wrinkling face, I put there with love and sweat for ancient things that are new now—us old. I still see us together,  in that line for future stars and naked footed-nights in optimal supreme lemongrass. Lie to me,  but not like a politician, more like a child that's scared she will lose her breath because her mama told her that one man would replace another man in her life. If you can't lie to me correctly, why are we together? This is an ultimatum born from the smile of a soul-stealer—a man. Place  your head on pillow. Let me smell your breath enter my nose, tickle the hairs. Let me feel coarse hair against the back of my legs. Le...

I want to stay home from work today I want to stay home from work today What that really means is, I want to organize junk draws full of building blocks, dried out ink pens, and half empty pill bottles, the accumulated detritus of twenty years. I will make shrines in our living room – memorials to the place God has met me. I absolutely will not part with birthday cards including your handwriting. Bury me in piles of carefully, crafted lines. I simply cannot toss away a lifetime.  I want to stay home from work today What that really means is, I want to vacuum carpets littered with popcorn hulls and dirty shoe prints. The hullabaloo of the kids and friends. Frenzied from togetherness and video games forgetting about mom and her strange notion that carpets must be minded like a newborn baby – cared for, tended to, the dust removed tenderly and lovingly, with reverence. Never has a rug been so cherished. The fibers filled with appreciation for home. One day, I will rip it out with my b...

A Brief Origin A bent echo of the end, an intrusion of The Real, a catastrophic tornado came through The Loop breaking apart my morose structure and tearing down buildings and trees and leaving us without power. So we pretended to be human beings. Some were the undead, some were charitable. I sat behind Parkview Place calmly reading Michael Connelly and handing out smokes as required. Dane almost lost it when he misplaced his glasses somewhere in the rubble. But I was strengthened later on my way to the writers group at the Independence Center when I looked and saw people were already repairing the garden at Boyle and Laclede with shovels and hoes, wheelbarrows full of fancy dirt. May we come together at the end. And when you listen (even when you’re in a book) you can tell how a story might develop, even a magically remarkable one about someone conquering death, and you can see how if it were written down it could grow into untold proportions. And then you can imagine the brute power ...