Flying Island

Loaded        Back then he showed me how to assemble the farm tool I did not want to touch: a small gauge rifle. My hesitation surprised him: his mother and sister shot well, their loyalty to homegrown food justice enough for dealing death to fat groundhogs or teenage racoons.   I could see the logic of knowing what every farm kid knew, but I didn’t like any of it, not aiming at a can on a bloodless fence post, not pulling the trigger.   Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participates in projects to promote literacy and the arts. Her poems have appeared in Natural Bridge , New Millennium Writings , Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island , English Journal , JAMA: Journal of the AMA ; also in the following anthologies: Mapping the Muse , And Know This Place , Visiting Frost.

Full Circle My mother has gone Home, some would say. No; her travels are ended. She wanted to die in her own small brick house and not in a garish hospital. A registered nurse, she knew better than to be played offstage by hissing machinery. Despite her wishes, her 85 year-long course was mapped from obstetrics to ER. A judgmental woman, our lives together were full of argument. A religious woman, she feared I would regret my atheism. A loving woman, she cared for, and buried, two husbands. These black letters, this white page cannot hold any of her laughter, her shouts, her angers, her sadness, her joy, and painful tears will not recover a single instant of her long life. Finally, we take our secrets with us when we go. Alone, my mother has either met her god, or suffered a simple mechanical failure. She alone knows, or knows nothing. Keith Welch lives in Bloomington, Indiana where he works at the Indiana Univ...

Pilgrims The old zinnias sway in  the garden bed, shoulders  hunched and heads bowed,  their bright garments tattered  and stained from wear, as  the sun shifts its sleepy gaze over the front yard. Still,  every flower is gamely doing  its job, gathering the light  and casting it up at our faces.  Who minds a missing petal like a broken tooth, or a brown smudge amid the gold?  Certainly not the bee, who  nuzzles every blossom, who blesses each splayed and faded  circlet, each discolored array, clasping the hands that are raised to her as she moves, saint-like, among them,  humming imperceptibly as she goes.  Joel Showalter , no longer a Hoosier by residence, has deep ties to Indiana. He was born in Marion and spent the first 24 years of his life in that part of the state. He received his bachelor’s degree in English and writing from Indiana Wesleya...

JULY 5 … and still they punctuate the night with their leftovers , the distant pops, the star- shattering booms, spiders and jellyfish hanging, dissolving over lakes, oceans, countryside, clusters of aerial chatter, the flight of animals, wild, domestic, yelps and whines, hugging the ground, digging, diving to escape the god- awful whatever it is, though see    how they glow,       the children’s eyes,          their upturned faces… and now the lull, the is-it-over-look-around… one bright, tiny fuse…someone’s Lady Finger…. Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two PEN Syndicated Fiction Awards. His most recent chapbook, What’s Given , is available from Kattywompus Press. New poems are appearing this year in I-70 Review , U.S. 1 Worksheets , Innisfree Poetry Journal , Dash , Passager and Front Range Revie...

Home Between the courthouse, where my brothers all appeared in turn, and the old jail, where they were lucky enough not to, there was Locust Alley and Willards, where we used sticks for swords. “ Un-guard! ” we cried, all the way home from a Zorro matinee at the Roxy or the Garden, the only two theaters in town, right across the street from each other. That block of Mary’ s Alley that ran behind our house and Aunt Cindy’ s, where the guy pulled a switchblade on me, and I let my tricycle topple over as I ran? It’s been turned to turf, along with all those neighboring lots, for the baseball field at Robb School. Our old double-block home has been replaced by first base. Second is where Ross, the bully, stole my Sears banana bike and removed the training wheels. He ’s buried now in Swissdale cemetery near my cousin Sam—two accidents, a motorcycle and a boy’s first car. Home plate is where Mrs. Seyler lived. How we made her pay ...

Working Tune: A Catholicon I step forward on my left foot, and my left foot says: “Things fall apart the center cannot hold.” I step forward on my right foot, and my right foot says:             “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” If the apocalypse arrives tomorrow, and the Lord lifts his few, fortunate faithful on invisible wires; if Cinderella makes it to the ball in a dress like the sun and impossible slippers— or if the apocalypse arrives tomorrow, and we are left quaking under wars and rumors of wars; and Cinderella must sort seeds, without help (because all the birds have died), in the blood-light of the moon— or if tomorrow the gears of the world don’t fall off, and the mills of the gods still grind to their tedious gain; and we all awake covered in the gray stars of last night’s ashes— even then we must remember to water our mother’s grave, tend her trees, ...

Summer Solstice on the West Coast of Ireland This afternoon the sun is more a rumor, probably still high behind a stretch of somber clouds in shades of dappled grey. The wind is brisk and plumes of ocean spray rise against the cliffs and sea foam drifts all the way to the bog, settles on the stubble of freshly cut hay and backs of sheep that face to lee, huddled against the day marked as the longest since the age of hoary-haired men dressed in ragged wool capes who aligned boulders to measure their place in creation, who tuned their lives to follow the light like the lilies on the bank of the estuary. It’s why I’ve come here, a blow-in like the neckless starlings motionless on the wire.   Sometimes they fly to a standstill against the wind before suddenly rising as one winged flight into an updraft, turning with the precision of a drill team, becoming specks then disappearing. Yes, it’s why I’ve come here.   I come here to be neith...

Unrhymed Sonnet You march to condemn barriers, murder, ancient contracts that cuff your liberty. I run fencing around my garden, not sharing peppers with squirrels, damn rabbits. Later I add cheese to the burgers, smoke rising off the grill. You join hands with strangers, block cars, then choke down more tear gas, dodge bullets while I mix up my second gin gimlet, freshly squeezed lime juice. “Enough is enough.” My daughter says grace, asks God to protect all the frontline workers and protesters. She prays please, please help with injustices. And I go to my soul’s dark room, spotlight on my complacent inactivity. Andrea Lee Dunn is from Indianapolis by way of the Texas-Mexico border and North Carolina. She studied creative writing at Texas Tech University and now enjoys trying to balance a writing life with raising three children. In addition to poems previously published by Flying Island , examples of her work can be found in New Mexico Review ...

George Floyd Unmantled now, and broken, I           lie naked here, Awaiting no more enmity           or spite, no fear Of prejudice that would betray           this moment. Show My life as something to be weighed           by those who know What difference is, what justice seeks,           what must be done. Show me to those who now will speak,           whose time has come. Jared Carter lives in Indiana.