Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 9.29 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Tory Pearman , Samuel Franklin , Eric Chiles , and Charlotte Melin . Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? For more info on how to submit, see the tab above. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors and Readers All images for this issue come from the Japanese fireworks design from a ca. 1883 catalogue of the Hirayama Fireworks company. (Source: Yokohama City Central Library).
Band Practice at the Park The pipers droned to a stop and I rolled my drum to silence when the rain came blustering over the treeline like a swarm of electric wasps jittering madly against the shelter’s tin roof so overwhelming a piper struck up a tune again but the pipe’s sound was drowned in the howl around us ancient sound eating ancient sound until suddenly the storm whimpered away in a second’s span it turned to drizzle and then dried as the sun cut clouds around the horizon and then a rainbow arced up and doubled not just across the sky but from the cornpatch across the lot like an otherworldly waterfall crashing quietly among Indiana’s greenness the colors rushing from and falling into the glistening golden ears of corn. Samuel Franklin is the author of two books of poetry: Bright Soil, Dark Sun (2019) and The God of Happiness (2016). He resides in Bloomington, Indiana, where he enjoys making useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests to h