Flying Island

Winter in Connecticut         by Robert Halleck On a cold, clear, autumn day in Connecticut Bob's guardian angel told him he was going to spend the winter in Florida with the Schwartzes. Bob was delighted, filling his head with visions of being alone in a Connecticut winter: happy hour at the Greyhound Pub, nights watching TV sports, more indoor tennis, lounging in old clothes. Flashing his best cherubic smile, the angel mentioned that on the day of his departure a very nice lady will be moving next door. She has dark hair, smoky green eyes, and will be coming to Bob's house to borrow a hammer. Robert Halleck has been writing poetry since 1958. He was briefly stationed at Fort Benjamin Harrison as a U.S. Army lieutenant during the Vietnam War. Poetry is more than a hobby for him, but it does not crowd out other activities such as golf, autocross racing, and care giving through Stephen Ministries. His recent work has appeared in The San  Di...

                              The Team of Disappointing Men                                                    by Michael Brockley At the misfits’ lunch table at your professional development conference, you introduce yourself  to a man who grew up in a dozen American cities and a woman who earned All-State honors as a  field hockey striker in Ohio. Over appetizers your group steers the conversation toward a lament  about disappointing teams.  The Mets ,  says the traveling man.  You offer the woeful Reds. She  cuts her vegan lasagna into bite-sized cubes. Studies the afternoon schedule, choosing between  this year’s empowerment lecture and a PowerPoint on malingering.  You never called the women you met at a restaurant named for...

Threnody by Shanda Blue Easterday Later the same day I learn the meaning of "threnody," which cannot be repeated too often, this song or poem celebrating or lamenting a life lost but well lived, written to remember the many questions unasked while you were living, such as "Did you read the novels of William Coughlin?" You read most Michigan authors, and I find these books entertaining in a way that you might have, to celebrate your appetite for literature and life, however common or exceptional, like rules for imagists or pink petals on a wet deep green bough. Shanda Blue Easterday is a retired professor of Literatures in English, current editor and contributor for Grit and Grace: A Women Writing Anthology , and editor for Mind Vine Press. She sits on the board of a local school. Her poems have appeared in Aesthetica, The Dos Passos Review , Dislocate , The Louisville Review , Flying Island, and in many other places. Her poetry collectio...

Helicopter Poet by Nancy Pulley I hover over creation, stroke a metaphor as if brushing the hair from my grandson’s forehead, pull a poem back from the hot fire of the critic as I did my son’s fingers from our autumn campfire. I can’t bear for the world to see them through any except a mother’s eyes. How I cherish the fact that they came from me, wonder if I should trust others to love enough to help with their raising. A teacher suggests taking out the heart of one, and a nearly famous poet calls them “sentimental.” Yet try as I might to build poems like bridges, I keep birthing them from some romantic liaison with air, sky, tree, river or the occasional star that falls to earth like a God. Words are not brightly colored Lego blocks to be torn apart and repurposed. They cling to me, my little monkeys, my sweet offspring, daughters coming in from the yard, peach juice glistening on their young, pink lips. Nancy Pulley 's ...

The Visit by Mary Redman Her eyes, a windless pond, look but do not see as I move to her table in the dining room. Slowly, the focus changes—and she knows it’s me but can no longer say my name. I take her out, slow-footed, for our walk along a certain route, the road encircling her sheltered home. She tries to set a faster pace as if she needs to prove something. No need to hurry, I say. Tongue-tied, she tries to speak, as if she must—to keep me coming back. She may be right. I do not know how to do this sort of small talk. I speak. She nods, pretends to catch my point. Looking at her soft-skinned face, draped jowls, crosshatched lines marking years, I wonder when she changed so. Soon it’s time to leave— We hug as if one of us might break, and I smell soap and Charlie , faded after hours of wearing. I tell her I’ll phone tomorrow. She blinks. I wonder what she thinks ...

Absence by Roger Pfingston My wife and I miss Carole, our next-door neighbor, and Elmer, also our neighbor who lived across the road. Elmer for his daily banter, a mechanical wizard with mowers and such, a sharp-eyed nonagenarian who roamed his yard, hose in hand, flushing the tunneled darkness of moles uprooting his grass. Carole for her resolve against cancer while tending myriad flowers, her front yard the plotted absence of grass. So recent their going, sometimes we pick up the phone or glance out the window before we catch ourselves. A retired teacher of English and photography, Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. He is the author of Something Iridescent, a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as four chapbooks: Earthbound, Singing to the Garden, A Day Marked for Telling, and What’s Gi...

Flying Island, the online literary journal of the Indiana Writers Center, is pleased to announce its nominees for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. Vincent Corsaro for "Lost in Translation: A Spaniard With English Ears," January 14, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/01/lost-in-translation-spaniard-with.html Mary M. Brown for "San Souci," August 9, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/08/san-souci-poem-by-mary-m-brown.html Terry Ofner for "Cave Painting," April 1, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/04/cave-painting-poem-by-terry-ofner.html Mary Redman for "Meatless Friday," November 11, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/11/meatless-fridays-poem-by-mary-redman.html Mary Sexson for "Her Addiction," January 21, 2019 https://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com/2019/01/her-addiction-3-poems-by-mary-sexson.html Congratulations and good luck to...

What the Body Does to Us in Time by Norbert Krapf Where does all the pain come from? Those knobs at the base of the thumbs that pulse and make it hard to open anything screwed tight. And those noises the shoulder joints make when we lift our arms? The dimming of our eyes and the disappearance of moisture in them that once lubricated vision? Those rude noises that more easily escape the apertures we’d rather not name? And what about those names that escape us so easily now? I mean even of people we still know we like. Oh and those appointments we are obliged to keep, who wrote them down in such illegible script on the wrong days or not at all anywhere? And the sweet flowers we have loved so long, why can’t they be polite enough to whisper their euphonious names in our wide-open ears? And love, why do we so seldom understand what the other is saying and become irritated by the irascible and too-loud word What ? Why d...

The Blowing Prophecy by Michael E. Strosahl Already the winds have chilled, already the leaves that waved through summer have dried and come loose. have been carried away to the fields edge to cackle with those who fell before, to crackle stories with the chaff of corn stalks who warn of the coming harvest that is sure to claim us all. The fragile bones of unshielded bean pods rattle as they shiver in the cool of a breeze, quaking with the rumble of the trucks and combines that will soon thresh out the gold grown from soil and sun and cast off the dust of shells and stems to be blown across cleared land as the blackbirds descend to look for the forgotten— those lost souls of autumn— before they too are chased, to flap away on the zephyrs of November. 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 ...