Flying Island

Editor's note: Today is Jerry Lee Lewis's birthday. Jerry Lee by George Fish Lewis The Killer signature rock ‘n’ roll piano Great Balls of Fire! There always was A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On when you rocked the piano and sang your inimitable, raucous way and those live shows! your long hair tumbling down your face climbing atop the piano bench and the piano itself playing the piano with your feet! It was an open secret you incinerated the piano and the rock whenever you came on stage and that’s no High School Confidential! you scorched-earth your career when you married your 13-year-old cousin languished in rock ’n’ roll wasteland after that but you always had your diehard fans, no matter what then you went country and middle aged, sang about Middle-Aged Crazy while not becoming middle-aged crazy, just being the same Jerry Lee as ever! And yes, What Made Milw...

L’Ancien by B. Childs-Helton I bring to bear whatever I can find – old potsherds, empty casings from some long-fought war in secret latitudes outside the official theater of sanctioned shadows on the ancient walls where the painted prey brought down perpetually is signed with a red hand long disappeared, magic sown with salt where the land is silent but the rocks are resonating underneath the insouciant sun that greens a disguise of grass and hides in the wheel of ghosts in some other sky. My voice is smoke because I have turned to sparks and incidental ashes like the rest, unable to remember what to say but singing anyway in borrowed light. Telepathy by B. Childs-Helton If I were reading someone’s mind right now (assuming that a mind is like a book, enough that its usual job is to sit unread), the leery owner might pretend real hard that whatever page I’m reading is either blank or trivial enough that n...

West Coast Baby Blueshift* by Henry Ahrens * blueshift : If an object moves closer, the light moves to the blue end of the spectrum, as its wavelengths get shorter. https://www.space.com/25732-redshift-blueshift.html for Natalie Doppler shifts push high-pitched waves to the west higher than a baby's wail. Shadows fall longer than trees and wind blade towers, little candlesticks standing straight in winter's white cake, Earth rolling from the sun, swaddling clouds wrapping her tight. Baby stirs in the womb on the coast ready to tip the balance of many lives and loves. Born this day after a shift change at the hospital far to the west of snow-covered fields and long-shadowed airplanes, light still streaming on the coast, warming ocean breeze brushing waves in mother’s hair. Henry Ahrens attended St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana, but now resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, wher...

My City’s Words, Winging by Dan Carpenter  I so love these books and I have come to an age and come to live in an age when the love stabs like love for a lost lover. Dear departed Kurt/Etheridge/Mari . . . so dear, my price for their passage. Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer residing in Indianapolis. He has have published poems and stories in Flying Island, Poetry East, Illuminations, Pearl, Xavier Review, Southern Indiana Review, Maize, Tipton Poetry Journal and other journals.

Aloha Shirt Man Guest-Hosts the Jeopardy Celebrity Christmas Extravaganza with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Invisible Hand Appearing as Contestants by Michael Brockley Santa Claus putzes with the buzzer, ringing in midway through the Tooth Fairy’s blitz through Christmas Carols with Mistletoe in the title. When the big elf weighs in, he tosses out bromides about seasonal pastries and the veterinary care of flying reindeer. The old saint dumbfounds Aloha with his ignorance of world cultures, as the Tooth Fairy expounds upon feng shui creches. Monopolizes the Christmas Ghosts category. While the Tooth Fairy stifles the jolly night rambler, the Invisible Hand drones about the purity of self-correcting markets. When the Hand brags about creating the Christmas season, Aloha cues the laugh track from the Star Wars Holiday Special, segueing into Double Jeopardy. The Tooth Fairy builds her lead by knowing about the blue, green and white suit that preceded Coca-Cola. She breezes thr...

R-E-S-P-E-C-T by Dan Carpenter Every day the probability grows stronger that someone I last met trading jumpshots and elbows on grimy blacktop or kisses on a secondhand sofa in an off-campus dump is dead now for it hasn’t been a month or a year and don’t think I can’t tell what is from what seems four decades are a boulder fallen across a mountain highway spiraling down having this time missed me but not the entire caravan it waits ahead or behind for me to drive on work around get out and climb over proceed on foot backing up being no option but there’s one other maybe you know I’ll just sit here in idle let the ’71 Beetle purr its contentment light the Marlboro I swore off in ’85 flip on the radio and play it safe not one not one beat will Aretha ever miss From Dan Carpenter: “I’m a freelance writer in many genres, born and residing in Indianapolis.I have published poems in Flying I...

Night: Sangre de Cristo Mountains by Doris Lynch Here. Now. Not above but mated to earth through journeys of clarified light. The Navajo etched crosses onto rock walls in Canyon de Chelly to mark the placement of stars. Tonight I watch one fall. It skips across Heaven’s meadows, close enough to grasp with my hand, close enough so that God’s fiery hair singes my head, my heart. Doris Lynch has recent work in Tipton Poetry Review, Frogpond, Haibun Today, and Flying Island. In 2017, she won the Genjuan International Haibun contest.

The Luminous Mysteries by Michelle Brooks For the better part of an hour, I sit in an examination room, my nose dripping onto the butcher paper, having feigned interest in the fake breast handed to me by a doctor at this urgent care. I had only hoped for a quick shot of antibiotics to make me well once more. After the door shuts, I drape my red coat over my legs, the coat I bought at a thrift store in Grosse Pointe, only a few miles from this decimated city I loved upon first sight. The doctor instructed me to practice on this model until he returned with a script. He takes my word for my condition, and grabs the breast from my hand, telling me a girl can never be too careful, and self-exams are the first line of defense. Don’t ask me how I ended up here. I’ve never been good at directions. Michelle Brooks   has published a collection of poetry,  Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Liv...

Winners of the 2017 Woman's Press Club of Indiana Prison Writing Contest First place: Down on Sand Creek by L.D. Smith Two words scrawled on a paper plate, Taped on my front door, said, "GONE FISHIN'!" I got a weekend date with Mother Nature. I can't tuen 'er down 'cause the treat's on her. Only my close friends know where I'm goin'. It's my home away from home in the palm of God's hand. I pitched my tent on a soft sandbar. Then I grabbed me a few dry leaves and twigs. I struck a kitchen match on the seat of my britches. Then I lit my kindlin' and added more wood. Night was creepin' in like a hungry coyote. As my fire burned bright on the edge of the creek, The flames were a-dancin' like a band of demons Celebratin' the capture of another lost soul. I grabbed my fishin' pole and a box of night crawlers. Then I baited my hook and I give it a sling. I reached in my coole...