Flying Island

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.

The Photographer Considers His Mother’s Gift His mother was a squatter well into her eighties, adept at crouching to a tight fold: rummaging a bottom cabinet for that now-and-then pan, edging the grass away from the sidewalk, even patiently removing the tough-minded dandelions in the rock driveway, her stand against Roundup and other killers of flora and fauna.        Genetics, of course, but also his early years of watching her do what comes natural… thus his tinkering with the underbelly of the mower or just hunkering   down because it feels good—a meditative stretch at the lake’s edge—and always those butt-low shots like yesterday,    moments after a truck pulled away in the Kroger parking lot, oil slick shining up at the camera’s eye— a rainy-day puddle glazed with a dark rainbow. Roger Pfingston is the recipient of a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and...

O, Susanna Twelve and my breasts           begin their slow swell, moon-bright in the seventh month of my slumber. This strange sheen, as within the begonia’s waxy              heart, my neck a spreading alpenglow            when, in front of the boy from Glasgow County, Norah Clond snaps my training bra. Small discs of turquoise hang        from my ears like fingerprints, the shape pressed into my chest like Ms. Smoots taught us to find lumps    grain-thick in the paddy of some temerarious fright, that dim    scepter, womanhood . Mornings she brushes the tops                of strawberry plants with her palms to find the dark pebbles of fruit. After P.E.    girls fold their...

                                                              After the Fire Before the fire next door at Rara Avis Apartments on 417 S. Fess, the dumpster had over- flowed richly, a stinky marketplace, inviting tenants to fling overstuffed black trash bags from the windows above. The American flag serving as a shade at a glowing window bothered me some, but it became all right after the fire—flames that ravaged the second-floor corner apartments, facing away from the dumpster—blackened into eye-sockets in the skull of the building. Today, the Rara Avis dumpster has been normalized by bona fide trash: - flattened-out, stained, frozen food cartons - storm-broken tree branches - yawning styrofoam clamshell carry-out food boxes - soggy cylindrical toilet paper cores - battered, den...

Amid the Plough, Orion, Cassiopeia Sometimes we assume the stars have all the horses: plowers of want, whinniers of need. Eye-graze those silver orbs miniaturized by distance, dazzling light across the cosmos. How improbably shaped constellations are with their fiery suns, backward- revolving moons, pastures of possibility. In the Gaia wind, prance awhile, weave your spiral hair over your cave ancestors, pretend that they--Denisovans, Neanderthals-- now scattered bone relics and mud DNA, will remember, be remembered. Doris Lynch has recent work in Frogpond , Modern Haiku , Tipton Poetry Journal , and in the anthology Cowboys & Cocktails: Poetry from the True Grit Saloon.   The Indiana Arts Commission awarded her three individual artist's grants, and she has worked as a librarian and an Ivy-Tech creative writing instructor.

Light Follows Me Light follows me everywhere inside this house and outside, comes in through windows, bounces off white walls, lies down on pine floors. When I drink water I swallow light, which passes through me into water. It turns me into a shadow that lies down. It wakes me in the morning as I open my eyes to the east and feel it on my face. I open the door and step into it on a wooden balcony facing mountains that surround me and hear prayers streaming from my mouth for those I love who are my light. May I one day transform into light that shines on others from above and also within when they read my poems. Norbert Krapf , former Indiana Poet Laureate, is the author of thirteen collections, the most recent being "Indiana Hill Country Poems" from Dos Madres Press, which will also bring out "Southwest by Midwest," which includes this poem.