Flying Island

Pull Me Home     There is no seed left  in Mother’s maple. No leaf left to fall. No root I haven’t stumbled over sticking from the sod. There is no word to call down lightning, no thunder in the cloud, no rain on the horizon, no train to pull me home. There’s no need to look higher than the silo. There’s no balm for these hands left bleeding till they’re dry. I walked hard, so hard all through the night, determined to pull myself home. There’s no stone, no sunken ship beneath the rocking waves. No buoy I can cling to, no solid place to stand. I’m tired, but I’ll tie myself to a gust of river’d wind and wait for seed or leaf or reaching root  to pull me from here to home.   Jenny Kalahar is a used & rare bookseller, novelist, and poet in Elwood, Indiana. She edits and publishes Last Stanza Poetry Journal. Her poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies. The 2022-2025 Poetry Society of Indiana Premier Poet, she also leads Last Stanza Po...

Moths and hummingbirds Little things. The way airborne swarms of dust find their way, like moths, to the stale light of mid-afternoon sun filtering through a window, a wobbly pile of books, a scattering of papers, a lake collecting rain, always remind me of the summer I spent trying to clean out Maggie Harper’s house and barn. I was sixteen. The lilacs were still in bloom, but on their way out, swooning over the backyard fence. Life smelled of cut grass, distant grill fires, honeysuckle dizzying the air. Summers still felt almost endless, like the slow roll of a wave, not like the hummingbirds, fluttering, floating, pulsing, then disappearing before you even notice. Logan Chace received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Hollins University, and currently teaches English and Creative Writing to high school students in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Previous publications include Versal Magazine , The Meadow , Plain Spoke , THAT Literary Review , The Bookends Review , Buddy, Brushf...

            In Memoriam for Elie Wiesel Slowly the minister read a description of hell, an exercise, he said, in the reach of God, his realm. It was not the squalid grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch nor Cotton Mather’s flame and ash nor even Dante’s cruelly calibrated fosse. It was a child thrashing at the end of a rope his hollow, sallow frame too slight to quit the agony of Auschwitz. Minutes passed. More. An anguished voice cried from the yard Where is God? Where is God? God is here. Later, after bacon and eggs, I leafed quickly past the inked accounts of barrel bombs of bruised and battered children and the wretched petty deaths of local homicides until at last I reached the crossword puzzle and did not weep.     Martin DeAgostino is a late-life convert to poetry whose only defense is that he got there as soon as he could. He lives in Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis.

     White Women’s Tears                     for Felicia We have fallen at the slightest hint of black-boy threat or smoky censure wafting its way from the candid mouth of any woman of color. We are reflex. We seek redress. We police pale cheeks, congregating in the center of some nerve. Call us any damsels’ names you wish: Sarah, Mary, Carolyn . In their distress, our dew drops from the glands of fear, clear as any whistle or stolen spotlight. Look how we whet the appetites of men we weren’t designed to indict. Our sister is spit. We never run out. Julie L. Moore , a Best of the Net and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon , which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review , Alaska Qu...