Flying Island

A Wednesday Night in Bloomington, Indiana by Sarah K. Ginter             It was the fall of 2009. Jackie and I decided to initiate  our  senior year at Bluebird, famous for their Wednesday night cheap beer. Jackie played "You Get What You Give” by New Radicals on her phone, and we sang and let the Bloomington street lamps lead us there, twirling over cracks all the way to the back of the line. We paid the $5 cover, and I winked and said, “I’ll get the first round.” I paid the whole 30 cents for two beers, and we weaved through groups of guys and girls standing and laughing to reach the stage. Jackie stopped to say hello to her friend Ryan who stood with a group of guys she knew too. She introduced me to Ryan, and I smiled looking around. When there was a break in the conversation, I leaned in and yelled in her ear, asking who the boy in the Birkenstocks was. “Andy,” she said then grabbed him and brou...

Falling, a field guide by Laurel Smith For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence? Fall in! Fall in! —Mary Oliver Fall like the hands off a clock, knowing your new name for the hours will alter the caliber of darkness and light. Fall like a star, so fast so far you imagine the sky as song, words and tune so true you can already sing it by heart. Fall like a stone into water, ripples and shadows, minnows and yellow leaves: better than a wish, this stone with nothing more to desire. From Laurel Smith : I live in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participate in projects to promote literacy and the arts. My poetry has appeared in various periodicals, including Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Tipton Poetry Review, Flying Island, English Journal, JAMA: Journal of the AMA; also in the following anthologies: And Know This Place, Visiting Frost, and Mapping the Muse.  

Father's Day by Gerard Sarnat It had not occurred friends regularly do choose this day each year to send greetings and often books more than on my birthdays or other good times which is just fine with me to have that identity when I am out in our world where lost brother LCohen or now PRoth (will Dylan predecease?) show us how to find wisdom creativity. Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts and authored four collections: Homeless Chronickes (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting The Ice King (2016), which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, American Journal of Poetry (Margie), Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Burningwood Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, T...

New Mercies Unseen by Matthew Miller I Sometimes, when harvesting the garden’s cabbage or kale, you notice a small cottontail cowering, cornered within the grapevine. Though you have no weapon, he does not trust your intention, and burrows out into the thorns. II In a nest beneath blueberry stems, twisted and sparse like a hollowed out spaghetti squash, a kitten shivers, born naked and blind. You stop the spade well above his head, slide over to transplant strawberries. It’s mercy he never sees. III There are sometimes, also, when you are sipping dark coffee at sunrise, eyeing the quiet rabbit. He nips grass nestled in the asphalt cracks. Like a mystic praying alone, he pulls sweet shoots from this rough road, ears up and head bowed low. Bio: Matthew Miller teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry—all hoping to create a home. He pretends his classroom at Bethany Christian Schools is a living r...

Backseat Rider by Marjie Giffin Crammed into the backseat of my daughter’s new Toyota Rav4 with two life jackets, a sack of boxed cookies, a carton full of tri-colored tissue-wrapped gifts, my hefty purse, extra tennis shoes, and this notebook, I scribble. I contemplate my destiny: relegation to the backseat for the rest of my days. I now have senior status which, translated, means I pay for gas and hotel rooms and stops for burgers and fries, and I sit forever in the back with the baggage. I have brought too much stuff, my suitcase weighs too much, my head is in the way of my son-in-law’s rearview mirror. I need too many potty stops, my phone volume is set too loud, I forgot to bring the correct change for the trail of toll booths. My varicose veins throb due to my crumpled position, and my neck aches from bending my head out of sight. I dare not complain, or I will be stereotyped as a crabby old b...

Song of the Radio Bees by Norbert Krapf Back then when Indy was a world away to the north I was a teenager in Kentuckiana washing and waxing cars and drinking beer with chums when the engines sounded on the radio like wild bees in the woods swarming nearer and nearer as a loud hum turned deafening and they roared closer. When I first sat in the grandstand decades later as a man circling into his seventies I heard a female voice say, “Ladies and gentlemen start your engines” and those bees roared again, louder than ever before. The low-slung cars roared off, big bumps raised on my arms and legs, and my lips smacked with the taste of honey and malt as this late song brewed. Norbert Krapf, former Indiana poet laureate, has recently published his 12th poetry collection, The Return of Sunshine , about his Colombian-German-American grandson. He is completing a collection of poems for children and a prose memoir about his writ...

Hungry by Jessica Mayo-Schwab He feeds at night like a shy raccoon Waiting until the last light is out. A quiet rustling from the next room precedes a whimper. His cries creep into my dreams and draw my head out                        from the pillow nest where I hide, desperate for sleep. He waits for me in the next room, eyes wide open and smacking lips. My hungry boy. My animal baby. From Jessica Mayo-Schwab: “ I am a new mother of a hungry boy, also a wife and a social worker. I love long walks on the Monon with my guys, reading and writing.”

The Death of Mr. Peanut by Mark Williams My early memories include a sky-blue Packard cruising down Main Street past The Victory Theatre, past the gleam of drum sets and shine of black pianos behind spreading wings of glass at Harding & Miller Music. Past rows of chocolate mice at Hermann’s Candy. Today, my mother’s at the wheel. That’s me beside her, watching Main Street narrow to the river. Suddenly my mother’s pumping the brakes, leaning out the window toward a parked taxi. “ Mister! I’m going to hit you!” Mother shouts. “ Sure, lady. Go ahead,” the taxi driver says. With my mother’s arm across my chest, I learn a yellow cab will stop a sky-blue Packard. Next, I learn that Mr. Peanut, the peanut man who stands outside his shop to hand out nuts, has blue eyes inside the giant smile that cuts across his giant peanut head. “ You OK, buddy?” Mr. Peanut asks— his head too large to fit inside my window. For me, the Tooth Fairy wil...

With My Grandson on Thanksgiving by Jeffrey Owen Pearson He says he is grateful for his father. His father is dead and he is grateful for him. He doesn’t talk about him except from those moments that seem to come from dreams. I remember him, too, every day. Some days I cry. My father used to measure everything, but I have no measure to reach him. The boy has no measure other than gratitude. Some places are pure. Pools so clear we will never understand. Our first meal. The last. Grateful for the bounty our hands planted in the earth and the earth gave back. A plate at the dark end of the table for the absent father. Father. The boy is grateful. Father. I am. From Jeffrey Owen Pearson: “ 'With My Grandson on Thanksgiving' began in a circle of friends and family. I was devastated by my grandson's gratitude for his father, it was such a pure and ethereal sentiment. His dad's birthday is the last day of November.”