Flying Island

Inner Workings by Matthew Early                          —for Dad You taught me to skin squirrels by the time I turned four: Knife-slice down the belly like scissors through wrapping paper. Tear guts from shell, make the inner workings forget they ever needed to be hidden. I would, not of want, but it made you smile bigger than the splitting pelts. So big, pride flowed like squirrel blood from the corners of your mouth. Your words never failed to drought my eyes: We’re all wired different, and there’s no shame in that. The woods were your church, so I’d go on our hunts: October swelling, squirrels gnawing hickory from stem in the treetops like some drunken Morse Code. I never told you I hated the ease of it all: How they’d fall like skydivers sans grace and chutes, but I know you could tell, that you were hurt when I didn’t want my ca...

Social Anxiety Disorder by Matthew Early I never acknowledge it: The tarantula that nests in people’s mouths. Hopping from host to host, its hair matted from heavy exhales, pincers and legs jutting out to chins, with weight crushing tongues long given up on. I am always too much a stranger, and victims— coworkers, classmates or cousins too far removed— aren’t ever eager to share. I just cannot but I do know how every sundown the spider clacks the ivory of canines, announcing ritual with a song they think only they can hear. It feeds venom to throats during descents to sleep in stomachs, overdosing innards and cocooning them for later. I never call to check up. Some mornings I see them pale and sickly from trying all night to drown it with Jack. Their breathing is always strained from the webbing covering their windpipes. The spider marionettes mouths to smile with silk, but people will always run from fangs and too many...