Flying Island

Walking the Highway Back Into Town by James Owens                  --Michigan City, Indiana., July, 2015 Insects unstitch bodies in the weeds: a possum on its back, the pads of its feet turned up pink, an infant's supplicant palms; a fresher possum, draped with a fertile tangle of black and green flies; a raccoon simplified by heat and time to a tattered pelt and a snarl twisted to bite the tires that killed it. Drivers honk or yell, not to warn but telling the happy news that they are riding --- traffic from the casino that simmers with money like fortunate blood --- while others trudge in sweat and mosquitoes, among the slain, displaced and liable to damage. Then the poor streets. Young men glare, astonished by their own rage. Sticky children plague a sulking, blotch-faced woman who clouts one from a chipped porch. The white-haired, drunken man spi...

The First Will Be Last by Scott Hensley The city's final statement is itself. It cannot see, or conceive, Of anything beyond its bounds. And so, it's not yet thought of its finest possibility: Its slow and sure descent Toward the ground.  Bio: Scott Hensley is an Indianapolis native and resident. He and his wife, Erica, own and operate a small farm on the city's southeast side.

How Many Times? by Norbert Krapf How many times does the touch of other people stay with us   in the tissue of our flesh, as memory that comes alive, return when another touch comes calling to draw us out of where we are back into another time or place: that priest who went wrong in what he did because he needed something he knew he should not take but could not stop himself from having, maybe a relative who wanted to make us feel good about ourselves and did know where to stop, that first girl who put a fingertip on the place that rose with a thrill in response to the tingling electricity of her warm and lush sensuality? All still alive in us, decades later, no matter how much our flesh shifts and declines, still present in how our spirit rises and falls. Bio: Norbert Krapf, former Indiana Poet Laureate, is a Jasper, Indiana, native who lives in downtown Indianapolis. His most recent books are Catholic Boy Blues ...

How to Be a Cop’s Wife by Lindsey Warner           1. Stay to the side as thick boots pound through rooms bullet clicks into chamber radio blares “42- Edward-29 copy.” Pray everything is charged no keys are lost car battery isn’t dead shirt was white enough.                    2. Stand for your goodbye kiss check the pins are all on straight breathe out as tires squeal around the corner. In the evening, listen to faraway sirens as you fold clothes. Slide open a drawer and hear bullets click into each other, run your fingers under extra silver buttons and loose change smell the acrid stench of metal polish. There. The sock’s match hidden beneath a box of condoms. Bring the socks together, fold the tops and leave them there, next to the soft skin of folded paper: a drawing by the other woman’s child. ...

Bible Study by Tracy Mishkin Genesis begins with light, ends with a coffin in Egypt. Then another coffin floats on the Nile, an ark for a tiny, wailing refugee who will build another ark, a tent of meeting in the wilderness. As an old man, he will squint at the Promised Land from an eroded mountain, his sister and brother buried somewhere behind him. No one will mention his children. If he were granted a gravestone, it would say he argued with his god. The one who sends floods that rip coffins from the earth, bobbing past this ark in which we huddle together. Bio:  Tracy Mishkin is a call center veteran with a PhD and an MFA student in Creative Writing at Butler University. Her chapbook, I Almost Didn't Make It to McDonald's, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2014. Her second chapbook, The Night I Quit Flossing, is forthcoming from Five Oaks Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The Guarding Zimbo Talking Blues ( He had one of those white-boy shot s.  Tommy Chong, speaking of Bob Dylan as a basketball  player) You’re on Bojangles , says Silas.  Hack him if he gets in the zone. The American Songbook dribbles to his right, favoring his melody hand. At the crossover he looks at the ball for a backbeat before bouncing it back to his shooting side. Hums something that might have been “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” I center my body between his hips and the basket. He grins the way he must have grinned each time he made love to one of those beautiful brunettes. Steps back and guns a set shot over my token defense. Twine. How do I body up the man who could Mr. Jones me during a time-out writing binge? On his team’s next possession he weaves into the key. The lane opening as if Baudelaire and Rimbaud had set NBA picks for his drive. At the goal the lucky wilbury stops, gathers his jump and kisses the orange off the sweet spot. His ey...

42  by Dave Malone What Jackie knows We hope to know. And when Preacher Steps up to bat, The man decides On home. No fear In him we know About. Such is The stuff we cast Our heroes with. In palest nights, The widow grasps The lot of sand And diamond grass. The grace of speed, The running path, The numbered runs Of Brooklyn’s best— Always fleet Of foot during Triumphant theft. Bio: Dave Malone received his graduate degree in English from Indiana State in 1994. He later lived in the New Albany area. He no longer lives in Indiana, but he considers himself part Hoosier. His great (seventh) grandmother, Mary Coughman Bridgewater, was a doctor of medicine in the early 1800s and lived at the small village of Pigeon Roost with her family. Though she lost children at the conflict there in 1812, she survived.  

Two Variations                    —for Hazel, 1951-2011 1. Conjunto When I hear your name, Hazel, it is 1994, you and I knee-deep in the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, under the rock hollows at Barton Springs, both of us visitors who met at the library and don’t have swimsuits to take with us over lunchtime, under the July sun so rabid we can’t stand to eat. We talk and talk, your Australian accent telling of loneliness from one continent to the next, brown water billowing over our toes like a thousand sentences to be read and written. At evening, you drive us in your landlords’ Datsun to a cantina where we order tacos and beer, both the same temperature, because we are here for the conjunto music you have never heard before. The Mexican quartet knows everyone sitting at the patched tables except us, so the men in silver-seamed pants flou...

Ponderings by Bonita Cox Searle   Ghosts sleep in ponds And rise up in early morning To haunt geese. When fish think they are alone, They dance on the surface Of the pond. Herons make no noise When they catch fish Dancing. An unloved pond Chokes on algae And raises mosquitoes. A loved pond Feeds its guests And invites them back. Old man pond frogs Snore When they are awake. When living on a pond, Ducks and geese practice A separate But equal philosophy. Ponds are as moody as the sea. Autumn leaves fall To the pond’s surface To dance with fish. Muskrats sashay back And forth past Dancing fish on the pond. When a pond freezes, The fish stop dancing and Fall asleep. Herons eat elsewhere. A pond does not know It is a pond. Bio: Bonita Cox Searle lives in Noblesville, Ind.,where she writes poetry and short stories. She is working on a novel. Her work has appeared in the Polk Street Rev...