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...

Cuban Missile Crisis Anxiety by Steve Brammell Lunch in a brown paper bag, eating in the bleachers, reading my Lord of the Flies , the other kids loud, but not enough to hide the sudden sirens in the distance only I can hear. I try not to move too fast across the basketball court, its circle a bullseye, push the bar on the exit door, the runaway elevator I’m trapped on never reaching bottom. Outside I sprint to the edge of the playground, look west where steel mills never stop smoking and the Nike base, with its white-finned rockets, guards against those slow bombers of another era. Just beyond the curve of the earth Chicago is the prize. I estimate the minutes it will take for grinning Khrushchev’s missiles to cross the Early Warning Line, and how many more until the people, now alert in the streets with nowhere to go, all look up, just like me, and watch the warheads, bright in the autumn sun, fall like Armageddon’s stars. F...