Flying Island

Carry He wears the world  like a torn coat uncomfortable with how the sleeves ride to the elbow how tight the shoulders feel when he moves too much. He dreams of when a 42 long, fit comfortably and tattered things were something told that didn’t seem like lies, this world,  a swallow of dry leaves.  He dreams of the day when  black men can live without the fear of a bullet tattooing the chest of everyone they love, their necks bent toward hell,  a day when no one will walk into a supermarket and open fire in the produce section behind the deli. He is like a boy with a tiny wounded bird cradling the world in his arms, stroking its tired feathers and nursing  it back to health so  it can raise more white sons to kill again. this coat grows smaller with each wear, full of holes and bleeding the same red.     Kevin LeMaster lives in South Shore Kentucky. His poems have been found at SheilaNaGig online, The Slipstream, Triggerfish Critical Review , Route 7 Review , West Trade Review , T

Asana     a posture in hatha yoga Who can deny the stippled beauty of spring trees budding green, or fuller yet, summer’s flourish     becoming the safe fires of autumn, the cold bonfires of hills and forests, mountainsides burning  to a bareness of dance and pose,          the annual asana of leafless limbs revealed thick and thin, multi- angled, jutting out from trunks barked according to species,                         their skeletal reach a held  grace deserving human pause.    Roger Pfingston is the author of Something Iridescent , a collection of poetry and fiction, as well as five chapbooks, the most recent being What’s Given , available from Kattywompus Press. He has new poems in The American Journal of Poetry, I-70 Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, 85 South, and Sheila-Na-Gig.

The Orange     after Wendy Cope There were shards everywhere for a while but then I climbed through the red clay of restoration.   You brushed me off with a straw broom and we played the game  of gratitude and looped our favorite park five and a half times.   We walked through the door of our home with a bag of new books,  artisan fridge magnets, the caffeine shimmers—an entire day  ahead of us. Sometimes I’ll be packing my lunch and realize, for the last three days, everything has worked out.  The way an orange is pre-sliced for whoever wants to eat it.  The way the soft white glow of the moon falls on the rain gutters, as silent as the hidden sparrows in our neighbor’s ailanthus. I think I was meant to share this sentiment, to piece it out like an orange and give a little slice to everybody—to keep enough for myself, but give  most of it to you.  It feels so new, to draw an arrow of peace from my chest to our garden  where your voice pushes the tomatoes and zucchini along, where you 

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 5.22 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have three contributors in poetry. We hope you enjoy this issue. Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? Send us your work! Submissions info can be found in the tab above. Links to each piece in this edition below. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Poetry Editor & Readers POETRY Becca Downs, "Peace Offerings" Aydin Akgün, "White" Cloe Watson, "Flash" 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!

Peace Offerings it’s early enough windows still black I see myself when I flip the switch so quiet I can hear faint buzzing of kitchen light heat cranks on, down the street a dog barks to be let inside I can’t hear the door but it’s quiet again and I imagine her at the foot of a man outside the wind presses its face to my kitchen window, envious of steaming coffee and my gentle aloneness– I can’t see him  but I know his scent, feel his cheek on mine I’m reminded of doves how they’re never late, not really, and the odor of olives rotting, shriveled on a branch half-forgotten, perhaps in a box in my closet. I stand at the window so long my face fades with pre-dawn black, morphs into a fence,  a small tulip tree budding like a teen, a garden plot waiting. Becca Downs is a poet, freelance writer, and MFA candidate with the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University. Though currently residing in Denver, she lived in Indiana for 30 years and still considers herself a Hoosier at heart. Her wo

White The Kodak smile of my mother,  the evening drink of my father,  the milk moustache of my baby brother,  the painted walls of the small kitchen,  the sheepskin rug of the living room,  the pressed collar of my uniform,  the broken chalk of the classroom,  the round buttons of my first suit… And then, the bright surprise on the x-ray, the large tumors on my spine, the cotton sheets of the hospital, and finally, the shroud,  that misty shroud that covers it all  before everything turns black.  Aydin Akgün was born and raised in Izmir, Turkey.  He graduated from the Lycée Saint Joseph in Izmir and moved to the United States in 1995. He received a B.A. in both International Relations and French from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2000, and  an M.A. in Creative Writing in both poetry and fiction from Johns Hopkins University in 2009.  He lives and works in Washington D.C.

Flash  Your hands on my first digital camera, your nails so round and soft at the capture.  What am I then? Ripped ballerina tights or a half-released bun? Just don’t let me see. I want you to do it, girl—he showed me what bodies can do, and now, my hands don’t belong on anything. I am 11, and already I wish to fracture the universe with a flash. Let us be Then, let us be  the arm you used to shoulder me into the frame, into you. You can’t imagine what parts of a man can be stored  in a silver box. That insistent arm of yours has kept me alive. Cloe Watson is a graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University. Her work has been published in Blue Unicorn , The Windsor Review , Oakland Review , Grand Little Things , The Racket Journal , Wingless Dreamer , Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Defunkt Magazine .

    Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 4.22 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have four contributors in poetry. We hope you enjoy this issue. Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? Send us your work! Submissions info can be found in the tab above.  Links to each piece in this edition below. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Poetry Editor & Readers POETRY James Green, "Passage to Egypt" Joel Showalter, "Letter from the Parking Lot" Angela Williamson Emmert, "Handprints on the Walls of Ancient Caves" Robert Manaster, "Late Season Slump" Follow us! Twitter: @JournalFlying Instagram: @flyingislandjournal 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!