Flying Island

Dig by Jo Barbara Taylor       Cathédrale Sainte-Bénogne       Dijon,France Outside the simple sacred church, an open pit. My first archaeological dig. July sun throws shadow deep in the hole. Diggers in khaki shorts and dungarees pick, sift, brush in consecrated dirt with tiny tools like children ply to shape a sandcastle on shore. They squat, sit, kneel, pick, sift, brush, and wash. Each exposed layer, down, down to 500 A.D. visible as circles on a stump, tells the story of basilica, abbey, cathedral in dust, shards of pottery, in bones. The sweet smell of sautéed onion floats from a window across the street, anoints the pit. When evening shadow darkens the pit and the aroma of butter and onion reaches the sixth century, the pickers and sifters climb the scaffold, pass each layer of the plot, all the while adding a new chapter. Now I am a character in the story, doing the same. Jo Barbara Taylor ...

The Rainy Day by Keith Welch The rain on the roof                   The rain helps hide drums a soothing rhythm.          us from the soldiers. It's a good day for                      all our belongings are sodden reading or perhaps a nap.         and heavy- the mud slows us. I curl in my armchair                 Our food is wet-in two days with book and teacup.               it will be exhausted. The rain rolls off the                  Maybe the rain will extinguish roof, down the gutters.              our burning houses. My eyelids are heavy; it's          The river is swollen; many will a good day to stay in....

Running in the Dark by Maureen Deaver Purcell             Even on a mildly bad day, my father, a good German Catholic boy, would never think of disrespecting a priest. But this time the priest created a very bad day. My mother had described to the priest the person her husband became when he got drunk, and the Father dared her to prove it. He and one of his priest pals got it into their heads that they would have my parents over one evening and then get my father the drunkest he had ever been, just to see if it was true – that he was a bad drunk. On the night of the experiment, in his stupor, Dad broke a chair. I think he tripped over it. Afterward he fled the rectory and drove the block and a half home while our mother lingered to discuss the situation with the priests.             My brother and I were sitting in the living room watching television that night ...

How to Love Someone with Bipolar Disorder by Becky Armoto Every January morning, we’d eat breakfast from our wedding-gift waffle maker, shivering like abandoned children (and we were children) in our heat-controlled apartment, where frost decorated the inside of the windows in snowflakes. Wrapped in quilts, we sat on an old futon that doubled as both our couch and our bed. So broke and so in love, we believed entire diamond-bright galaxies revolved around us. How could we have known my six-month depression was more than homesickness? Ten years later, we found ourselves in marriage counseling, sitting across from each other like war generals. I looked at the Nativity set on the end table where cold, hard, chipped baby Jesus stared at nothing. I stared back at my husband and said, “I can’t love you anymore.” In spite of this, he carried me through the day to day realities of child-caregiving, shopping, cooking, bill-paying, and washing laundry as I lay in bed. Now, ten more years hav...

All Memories Are Really Half Memories by Rosemary Freedman All memories are really half memories; a pie without the smell of the pie. A photo of you fishing without the sting and swell of mosquito bites. The lake with small granite colored waves and we cannot recall the name of the boy who drowned there, or even that he drowned. We think back and see all the clear faces, but they were never really clear, because the sun was almost completely blinding. And this is how it is, our brains on perpetual auto-correct, fixing the broken half-faces. Correcting all the flaws. Tricking us. Sometimes we wake up and all that is left are uncorrected proofs. The half face we could not see is filled in with the imperfections, or left empty to show what never was. Sometimes we see just a blur. The photo someone took when putting the camera into their purse. The memory we did not pay attention to— like that one girl who sat alone in the cafeter...

Head Up           by Manon Voice ... shoulders back. Don’t tell them how you struggled to get out of the book laden bed impoverished with broken poetry hooks ringing over your head a quarter widowed wine glass you took with an antidepressant and the taste of your own salt. How you fed the dog and didn’t yourself. How you barely breathed in the shower And clothed yourself in war black because it was easiest to hide in. On the way there was no song somber or sultry enough for the trip, everyday how you survive the loneliness of the driver side the overwhelm of that much control between the breadth of your hands. Don’t tell them how you count miles as the making of a life and numbers grow on you slowly edging you out of risk. Don’t ask yourself “W here have you been? ” after all the “good mornings” and dirt coffee taken with emails. No one after noticed how your legs hang from the desk chair nor ever touch the floor,...

Three poems by Norbert Krapf: Meeting My Grandson in Regensburg A whole Popo cupped in a hand a tiny heart beating against my chest and puffs of breath kissing my neck, I look down upon an innocence asleep and would live long enough to love and protect and sing it forever. Cheerios in Bed in Berlin You are in bed in Berlin and smiling brightly as you hold a yellow box of American Cheerios your Colombian mother bought you as special treat. In the next frame your head is tilted and thrown back, mouth wide open, as you salivate your circles of O oats! Little things delight you the most. Little man who savors what is small and not always easy or cheap to find, you readily give yourself to showing how deeply you appreciate what comes your way. Your smile is your expression of gratitude, your thanks come out baked half German, half English, and your Love is expressed Wuff-oooh! You don't want to be anywhere else. Your favorite munchies are in ...

Restless Night drags to a close. At dawn, the hospital is waking. with equipment clatter ,  hallway chatter,  meal cart’s squeaky wheel, breakfast on a tray-table,   meds being fed,  doctors rounding patients, bed rumpled, alarms  if I get up, staff rollover  at 7. I sit up, note  where I am, wish I were home. I  look out the window   as molten gold explodes on the horizon, fills  the seams in the landscape, blankets the hospital, sucks  all the air, overflows all boundaries, slops  over the edges,   spangles  the earth. – by Ed Alley From Ed Alley: "I woke up in the hospital after treatment for pneumonia. This poem resulted. I've always been fascinated by words, what is said, what is meant, what is left out. Poetry challenges me to go deeper into words, to make them come alive."

Winter Mornings on 17th Street by Samuel T. Franklin The sky tumbles to Earth and shatters to ice. Snow folds like colorless oceans and shifts, greedy, across the trees. The creek shines clear and clean as wiped porcelain. A man in dark wool studies the frozen currents, drops twigs and pine needles on the ice and tries to conjure some prophecy of spring. Wind slips subtle as a thorn through jackets and gloves. I do not know this city, and the ravens are quiet. The man in dark wool stands, hopeless, the twigs piled at his feet, burned by invisible fire. Samuel T. Franklin is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and Bloomington. His first book, The God of Happiness (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), was published in 2016. He can be found at samueltfranklin.wordpress.com.