Untitled by Joseph S. Pete O squat office towers in a distant suburb, you barely scrape together a skyline at 12, 14 stories high. You’re visible from about a mile away, but too diffuse to fill a camera frame. But the metro area is so full, so bursting, that not all of the corporate headquarters can be squeezed into the laced corset of the central business district. You’re mostly boxy, in one case cylindrical. There are few curlicues to draw the eye except for the crowning radio aerials. You stand primly in contrast to the hurly-burly of Gothic, Modernist, Postmodernist and whatever-else architecture downtown. Downtown is all glass and bygone craftsmanship and ambition; you’re an upended cardboard box bobbing in a sea of surface parking. You’re a cheap date. You loom over La Quinta motels. You loom over Outback Steakhouses, Olive Gardens, Texas Roadhouses. You loom over gas stations, strip malls and outlots. You loom over Costcos, Petcos, Diamond
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.