Flying Island

Congratulations to the 2022 Flying Island Journal Best of the Net Nominees! "Assume America," a poem by Carl Boon "Carry,"  a poem by Kevin LeMaster "Letter from the Parking Lot," a poem by Joel Showalter  "Portrait of Mourning in the Coop,” a poem by Liz Whiteacre   Congratulations! Interested in submitting to the Flying Island? Submit here .

  October                               We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond. –Gwendolyn Brooks   Weary green makes way for every shade of fire:     limbs of maple, beech, and oak, shrouded all summer, now sway in a bright wind.   The dance of death , they say, but no one is grieving:     not the harvest moon, not sunshine on frostbit grass, not dreamers eager for the dark.   Let’s find atoms that we share, here in the raucous     foliage of you, me : essential as water or air, the bountiful mess of us. Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana, and happily participates in projects to promote literacy, the arts, social justice, and public health. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Natural Bridge , New Millennium Writings, English Journal, Tipton Poetry Journal , and Flying Island ; also in the following anthologies: And Know This Place; Mapping the Muse ; Visiting Frost.  

Flying Island Short Fiction Contest Guest Judge: Barbara Shoup Prizes $100 prize for 1st Place $25 gift card to Half Price Books* for 2nd Place $15 gift card to Half Price Books for 3rd Place Submission Fee: $3 entry via Submittable (helps cover our Submittable costs) Submissions open on November 1st and will close on January 1st.  Contest Guidelines: -Word Count: 1,000 word maximum -Format: Double spaced and 1-inch margins -Please submit a short cover letter with a brief bio -Your submission should be anonymous. Do not include your cover letter with your submission. Please remove your name and any other identifying information from your submission. -Stories must be submitted via Submittable to be eligible. Submissions not chosen will be eligible for publication in a future edition of the Flying Island Journal.  About the Judge: Barbara Shoup is the author eight novels, including Night Watch, Wish You Were Here, Stranded in Harmony, Faithful Women, Vermeer’s Daughter, Everything You

  Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 9.22 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have three pieces to share in poetry and a new Craft Corner piece by our Creative Nonfiction Editor, Michael Gawdzik. We hope you enjoy this issue. Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? For more info on how to submit, see the tab above. Links to each piece in this edition below. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors and Readers POETRY Logan Chace, "Moths and hummingbirds" Martin DeAgostino, "In Memoriam" Julie L. Moore, "White Women's Tears"  CRAFT CORNER "Go for the Eyes!" by Michael Gawdzik Are you a writer who is from the Midwest or has close ties to the Midwest? We'd love to read your work. Submissions info in the tab above.  Support the Indiana Writers Center!

Moths and hummingbirds Little things. The way airborne swarms of dust find their way, like moths, to the stale light of mid-afternoon sun filtering through a window, a wobbly pile of books, a scattering of papers, a lake collecting rain, always remind me of the summer I spent trying to clean out Maggie Harper’s house and barn. I was sixteen. The lilacs were still in bloom, but on their way out, swooning over the backyard fence. Life smelled of cut grass, distant grill fires, honeysuckle dizzying the air. Summers still felt almost endless, like the slow roll of a wave, not like the hummingbirds, fluttering, floating, pulsing, then disappearing before you even notice. Logan Chace received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Hollins University, and currently teaches English and Creative Writing to high school students in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Previous publications include Versal Magazine , The Meadow , Plain Spoke , THAT Literary Review , The Bookends Review , Buddy, Brushf

            In Memoriam for Elie Wiesel Slowly the minister read a description of hell, an exercise, he said, in the reach of God, his realm. It was not the squalid grotesques of Hieronymus Bosch nor Cotton Mather’s flame and ash nor even Dante’s cruelly calibrated fosse. It was a child thrashing at the end of a rope his hollow, sallow frame too slight to quit the agony of Auschwitz. Minutes passed. More. An anguished voice cried from the yard Where is God? Where is God? God is here. Later, after bacon and eggs, I leafed quickly past the inked accounts of barrel bombs of bruised and battered children and the wretched petty deaths of local homicides until at last I reached the crossword puzzle and did not weep.     Martin DeAgostino is a late-life convert to poetry whose only defense is that he got there as soon as he could. He lives in Fall Creek Place in Indianapolis.

     White Women’s Tears                     for Felicia We have fallen at the slightest hint of black-boy threat or smoky censure wafting its way from the candid mouth of any woman of color. We are reflex. We seek redress. We police pale cheeks, congregating in the center of some nerve. Call us any damsels’ names you wish: Sarah, Mary, Carolyn . In their distress, our dew drops from the glands of fear, clear as any whistle or stolen spotlight. Look how we whet the appetites of men we weren’t designed to indict. Our sister is spit. We never run out. Julie L. Moore , a Best of the Net and seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon , which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review , Alaska Quarterly Review , Image , New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily , Pra

  “Go for the Eyes!”     Michael Gawdzik Let’s face it, eyes cause nothing but trouble…Medusa, the Eye of Sauron, Polyphemus, The Three Stooges. Heck, if Indiana Jones hadn’t controlled his peepers when the ark was causing trouble, we would’ve never seen him and Sean Connery punch Nazis in the desert. But in the galaxy of prose, we have another issue, the dreaded “I.” It just sits there, resting against whatever punctuation may be next to it, or it just teeters, haplessly, supported by whatever words go near it. A light breeze can turn it into an underscore in an instant.  It is elusive and boring and wholly dependent on the other twenty-five letters in the alphabet to make it remotely interesting.  As writers – specifically creative non-fiction writers – we have become too dependent on this vertical line to do a lot of work for us. As a non-fiction editor, a CNF reader for multiple lit mags, and a writer myself, nothing twists my stomach more than seeing an underdeveloped  “I.” Writer