Flying Island

                               Congratulations to this year's Flying Island Journal Best of the Net nominees! Also a special thank you to our editors and readers for all their work for the journal. Winning entries will be announced near the end of January, 2022. For more information on Best of the Net, visit: http://bestofthenetanthology.com/ POETRY "During the night" poem by Laurel Smith https://www.flyingislandjournal.org/.../during-night-poem... "Rainwater Hair" poem by Steve Brammell https://www.flyingislandjournal.org/.../rainwater-hair... "My Shame is the Bowl of Duck's Blood Soup" poem by Natalie Solmer https://www.flyingislandjournal.org/.../my-shame-is-bowl... "Racket" poem by Amy Ash https://www.flyingislandjournal.org/.../racket-poem-by... "The Dolls of 2020" poem by Jenny Kalahar https://www.flyingislandjournal.org/.../the-dolls-of-2020... "P...

      My Shame Is the Bowl of Duck’s Blood Soup My mother as a child at Easter ran from the table & refused to eat. My shame is my mother looking into the bowl  & seeing a future daughter only brought to her after too much blood & babies lost. I would bring shame, unlike the first: my golden sister. Even at the bowl, even at the table my fortune in one of 300,000 eggs locked inside my mother. Even when she, before birth, suspended inside her mother. As she grew & entered into the rooms filled with the shame of four daughters and the parish priest at the dinner table every Sunday night. Something snapped in their mother when they grew breasts. Each daughter has a differing story, a differing shame. But of their mother, they all say, One evening, she came home from confession and could not get out of bed. She went away for awhile. Though of that part, my mother says If I don’t remember it, it didn’t happen. They all say she had proof miracles were real....