Flying Island

Blanket Welcome at Kennedy Airport                                                         — for Peyton, my grandson by Norbert Krapf  There was a small pink, blue and green blanket we sent to Bogotá for your mother to be wrapped in when she came to us in New York. When her plane arrived at the gate at Kennedy Airport a beautiful young Colombian woman with long black hair stepped off the plane smiling. When we walked up to her she placed baby Elizabeth Maria in that blanket in my arms. I held, beheld, kissed her and said, “Welcome, Love!” There was no wall whatsoever. No insults on any tough lips. We wrapped and held her in love. Which is what we give you also, her beautiful Colombian and German son with dark light-filled eyes. Norbert Krapf' s latest collections are T he Retur...

Inner Workings by Matthew Early                          —for Dad You taught me to skin squirrels by the time I turned four: Knife-slice down the belly like scissors through wrapping paper. Tear guts from shell, make the inner workings forget they ever needed to be hidden. I would, not of want, but it made you smile bigger than the splitting pelts. So big, pride flowed like squirrel blood from the corners of your mouth. Your words never failed to drought my eyes: We’re all wired different, and there’s no shame in that. The woods were your church, so I’d go on our hunts: October swelling, squirrels gnawing hickory from stem in the treetops like some drunken Morse Code. I never told you I hated the ease of it all: How they’d fall like skydivers sans grace and chutes, but I know you could tell, that you were hurt when I didn’t want my ca...

Cuban Missile Crisis Anxiety by Steve Brammell Lunch in a brown paper bag, eating in the bleachers, reading my Lord of the Flies , the other kids loud, but not enough to hide the sudden sirens in the distance only I can hear. I try not to move too fast across the basketball court, its circle a bullseye, push the bar on the exit door, the runaway elevator I’m trapped on never reaching bottom. Outside I sprint to the edge of the playground, look west where steel mills never stop smoking and the Nike base, with its white-finned rockets, guards against those slow bombers of another era. Just beyond the curve of the earth Chicago is the prize. I estimate the minutes it will take for grinning Khrushchev’s missiles to cross the Early Warning Line, and how many more until the people, now alert in the streets with nowhere to go, all look up, just like me, and watch the warheads, bright in the autumn sun, fall like Armageddon’s stars. F...

The Dragon and the Wolf by Maria Pizzo I want to believe I met a wolf in my past life. I want to believe he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. In a world with so little, missing genuine love, I want to believe his arms that held me were real. Have you ever been so alone that the walls begin to talk? Buying into lies, philosophizing the woken lonely nights? I want to believe what he told me was true. I want to believe that balance sustains life. Where everything is nothing, and nothing is everything, the absence of all is so much in itself. Have you ever been so wrapped up in someone that you shrink down to nothing? Feeling like your existence has ceased, finding peace in the silence, hoping never to return? I want to believe he was real for my sake and his.  Hidden away, menacing face, completely unapproachable, desperate for love.  Out of the cloud of delusion, I know the sky is painted and music is artificial. I know...

Up in Flames by Mary Redman In a rusted barrel behind a frumpish house, raged a growing pyre fed with scraps from a cardboard box. Its tender was no white-garbed virgin stirring ritual flames, but a young wife in a cotton housedress. Brown hair fastened at the base of her neck escaped and lashed her face with strands while she worked against the wind, her mouth a grim line. There was time— the babies napped, and the older children were off to play.    Impassively she incinerated pages— was nearly finished, had heaped a final load into the backyard drum.   Then, caught off-guard by smoke- reddened eyes and heat that pinked her cheeks, she watched a gust lift one lit page, sail it aloft, and set the field ablaze.  When the firetrucks and her neighbors arrived, she said nothing of her blunder. An empty box lay in stubbly grass, while embers of dreams she’d released floated like fireflies throug...

Small Book of Heart Songs on the Shelf by Norbert Krapf  There was a small handsome hardcover book on the shelf near the bed in which I slept that I could not resist reading at night, a collection of poems by Native high school students. I don’t remember the title, but it could have easily been Heart Songs , so pure, natural, and sincere were the beautiful musings of these young thinkers expressing and sharing their vision of the world they were exploring, navigating, coming to terms with. Nothing concocted, not a word puffed up, no images strained to impress. The rhythms were like the beat of a heart and the pulse of blood that flowed from the center of each young life I was touching and becoming one with. I can still feel the texture of the cover of that little book and how happy my hands were to hold it, how much I loved opening those pages and being inspired each night as I savored a fe...

Sweet corn tanka by Laurel Smith 1. On Sunday the sweet corn was perfect: each bite a confirmation of every summer memory laced with butter, salt, warm gold. 2. By Thursday, in spite of cool storage, these last three ears were failures: no fireworks, poor texture and taste, bland regret between our teeth. 3. Cultivars for “sweet” number over a hundred: have we known them all? Zea may s—star of the farmers’ market, perennial favorite. 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. ”

Trauermantel by Michael E. Strosahl Little girl, little girl, wants to dance, wants to twirl Flit and fly, skip and flutter, hushed by Vater, stilled by Mutter But Oma would not mind, Oma would not care, Resting in the box upon the table Should she dare? To twirl her dance dress under the black, to flit her wings under her mourning cloak And wouldn’t her Oma smile? Michael E. Strosahl is originally from Moline, Illinois. After moving to Indiana, he joined several poetry groups and traveled the state meeting many members of the Poetry Society of Indiana, also serving on its board for several years. Maik (as he is known) has appeared in the print version of Flying Island , along with appearances in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Bards Against Hunger projects, on buses, in museums and online at indianavoicejournal, poetrysuperhighway, projectagentorange and adaysencounter. He has recently relocated to Jefferson City, Missouri.

Living Week to Week by Phillip Smith Relief is what I seek ooo from this dread destiny ooo of living week to week. Make payments every week, ooo if only partially. Relief is what I seek. Creditors want to speak. Why does it have to be, ooo this living week to week? Spending I cannot tweak. No one can hear my plea. Relief is what I seek. The situation bleak; ooo my stark reality. I’m living week to week. My pay is at its peak. To get what’s due to me, ooo relief is what I seek ooo from living week to week. From Phillip Smith: “ My stories have been published by Jake Magazine, Inscape Magazine, Literally Stories, Chicago Literati, Comic Carnival Zine, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Dime Show Review. My poem “23 Years Sober” appeared in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry. My stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novella “Rage” was produced in the spring of 1993. During my senior year at the University of Evansville, I was award...