Flying Island

Lost in Art by R E Ford “ I'm a broken man,” he says with a slur. “ You're coming down to go places,” she holds his hand. She's fragile too. Wavering stars in the corridor of poetry— I read the words and studied the music. It made me feel too indifferent and distant. People talk, I don't because I'm somewhere in between places caught off guard by the people who don't know the words that shatter the margin of the self, he thinks. “ I'm trying new things, not because I want to or care to, but because when the beaten down-ness of life got me, I lost it,” he says as she pulls him closer. She holds his hand. “ Good men suffer, great men get lost in trying to become something bigger than the talk of the town,” she kisses him. R E Ford lives in Brownsburg. He just published his first book of poetry, Justified Dreainess (The Nymphs Lit, 2017.) You can find some of his work on his Instagram page. ...

Thick Hair by R E Ford It’s thick—internalize it please. In the nature of you it becomes you. In its tangled mane and darkness, you arrive looking in a mirror. Those dour hours of retreat; those seconds of freedom on Friday; I watch the hair move a new way, some secret we entwine in. Blackness first then the age of color, highlights shriek age and dignity. I study it nonchalantly. It suits the mood that you incline. Somewhere in this poem was you as the hair repels so many unlike. Bio: “I live in Brownsburg. I've been writing poetry for quite some time. I enjoy reading over writing, but with the accumulation of ideas comes the want to form my own and place them somewhere. My first name is just the letter R. There are many myths surrounding that name, and altogether I like to have several stories circulating about it at once. I work at UPS and attend classes at Ivy Tech. I have six poems going into The New Voices, the literary journal.”