Flying Island

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 ...

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 5.30 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Alex Missall , Dave Malone , Ken Honeywell , and Doris Lynch . 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

The Dumb Luck of the World  Yet I’d like to think of both these new, down-feathered  ducks—who float as if wordless worlds found here on this close pond surface,  which starts at a thawed center,  but ripples out toward frozen edges—as kin to the flock who stayed here year ‘round until one day leaving. Words always sound better in thought keeping there.   And a world of words does not englobe this source of circles within melting circles, yet I’d like to think of the two mallards as one of those faint, earthly mysteries of home forgotten, then found, as if I were recalling now the happy, dumb  luck of overwhelming life  after moving past the pond. —Alex Missall   Alex Missall studied creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. His work has appeared in Superpresent , and Hole in the head review , as well as other publications. His poetry collections, A Harvest of Days , and Morning Grift , are forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (2026)...

In the Break Room at the Medical Billing Office  Justine hems pants  on her coffee break and won’t finish a seam on an odd-number and has to start over if the sewing lottery  spits out an uneven count. When I ask her about  the child’s pants she sews, she tells me, grandparenting is the only thing.  I think she believes it right then as she weaves the stars with her tiny needle, lost there like God.  - Dave Malone Dave Malone is a poet and screenwriter from the Missouri Ozarks. He holds degrees from Ottawa University and Indiana State University. A three-time Pushcart nominee, he is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Bypass (Aldrich Press, 2023). His work has been featured on NPR and appeared in Midwest Review , Fourteen Hills , and Red Rock Review . He can be found online at davemalone.net and on TikTok @poetmalone.

Puerto Jiménez This is where we came to rest on our way to paradise, prop plane idling, laden with our duffle bags and dreams of life away from howler monkeys braying in our ears back home, seeking peace amidst the wild Costa Rican forest flora— outré birds and ocelots, two-toed sloths and coatimundi, water-walking Jesus lizards— only to encounter death: a tiny cemetery by our lonesome landing strip, cockeyed crosses, black mold staining jagged rows of concrete crypts above the ground like buttress roots tangled in the humid forest, clinging lightly to the clay, breathing in the cloudy air. And I wondered as we taxied if the dead preceded us, soaring off above the ocean like a pouch of pelicans or they waited by the runway lying in their sunlit bardo, more like the resplendent quetzals perched in avocado trees, heedless of the needful travelers touching down and taking off into the sky, as if this land were paradise enough. - Ken Honeywell Ken Honeywell is a reader, writer, Butler Univ...

On the Cusp of Tomorrow New Orleans We lie in bed snug as milkweed pods in our soft cocoon. Sweet olive scent  pours through the windows. Outside,  firecrackers whistle and bang. Inside,  the full moon pours ivory light over  our century-old floorboards, and though  we can’t hear them, the cockroaches have begun their nightly strut cruising  the countertops in search of crumbs. We should be in the Quarter dancing with the volleyball gang, singing off-key, keeping an eye out for Sean O’Shaughnessy  who usually veers into the jasmine shrubs  by this hour to sleep off too many ouzos  from the Greek Decatur Street bar. Instead,  we lie whispering to each other like children  sent to bed for a prank. As the tugboat’s  eye illuminates our room, the clock’s hands  move closer. At a minute to twelve,  the deaf couple next door flicks their yellow  porch lights on and off, on and off, a silent celebration of our...