Flying Island

The Butterfly Garden without Mariposas The giant sunflowers of August can no longer resist the pull of September gravity. The rust petals list toward the sun while the golden ones crash in silence onto the last flowers of late summer. Black-eyed susans. Chalice-like crocuses. Throughout the garden, husky bumblebees stumble through the harvest of zinnias, their black-and-yellow flights growing ever more erratic as their pollinating missions wane during the humid afternoon. In this cycle of decay, swamp roses push forth a new bevy of blooms, and Mexican sunflowers, volunteers to this butterfly garden without mariposas , claim these days before the tenth month to flourish. As if the wayward patron saint of unsung beauty, having rested overnight beneath a wilted sunflower, plucked a pinkening love apple to leave in her wake before resuming her odyssey.     Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Hobo Camp Review ,...

    Once a year, the men you worked with at Creviston Steel assembled in the parking lot across from the railroad tracks with their pistols and rifles. The weather was always warm and clear. A weekday in Spring. Following a gesture from Fast Eddie, they left the break room during lunch to retrieve an arsenal of weapons from the trunks of their Oldsmobiles or from the gun racks in their pickup trucks. You watched from the dirt path to the shop, an outsider to this gung-ho celebration. It was the dawn of the trickle-down era. Ronald Reagan had promised to create a million jobs. In the parking lot, the men aimed their firearms at the sky. At the small Odd Fellows lodge across the street. No crows were killed. No windows were broken. Your co-workers spoke in hushed tones. With none of the mockery about the poems you wrote that didn’t rhyme. You didn’t know enough about guns to ask the Preacher to explain the difference between a rifle and a shotgun. But you’d heard Dirty Harry pro...

                              The Team of Disappointing Men                                                    by Michael Brockley At the misfits’ lunch table at your professional development conference, you introduce yourself  to a man who grew up in a dozen American cities and a woman who earned All-State honors as a  field hockey striker in Ohio. Over appetizers your group steers the conversation toward a lament  about disappointing teams.  The Mets ,  says the traveling man.  You offer the woeful Reds. She  cuts her vegan lasagna into bite-sized cubes. Studies the afternoon schedule, choosing between  this year’s empowerment lecture and a PowerPoint on malingering.  You never called the women you met at a restaurant named for...

The poets in your state capital have asked if you still believe in Santa Claus by Michael Brockley Once you couldn’t name a jazz artist if you were spotted every consonant in the artist’s last name. Now you have difficulty distinguishing between the joy and sorrow in a saxophone solo. You spend hours with your sock monkey disciples sharing memories of county fair queens driving the lead cars in your hometown’s demolition derbies. But these days your friends drive German cars with St. Christopher statues two-stepping with bobblehead hula dancers on their dash boards. The patron saint of lost causes has opened his sleeping bag across the back seat of your Motown jalopy. He’s spent centuries perfecting the art of making cradles from civilization’s detritus and has mined your record collection of troubadours with recluse biographies and grave robber voices for album covers to shellac on the cradle headboards as hex signs. On nights when you can’t sleep, you regale the patron saint of ...

Buffalo Nickels and Steel Guitar Music by Michael Brockley for Jay Zimmerman Last night I counted a buffalo nickel among the change left in my Levi’s. All summer, butterflies have fluttered from the shadows of the silver maples that have overgrown my fencerow. When was the last time you held a nickel? What was the last color of butterfly to land on your arm? I try to remember your poem about coming of age in Miami, but all I recall is you cruising in your Firebird along the strip of motels where Yankee teenagers on spring break gathered to drink local beers named for hurricanes. In the evening, a jazz combo lost themselves in “Kind of Blue.” The last time we talked we sat in a college bar surrounded by board games and used books. We read B. H. Fairchild’s poem about a young Mickey Mantle walloping a fastball from the green hell of steel guitar music off a water tower in Quapaw. “There’s more to it than that. It’s about men playing for redemption,” you said. The depth you...

Aloha Shirt Man Guest-Hosts the Jeopardy Celebrity Christmas Extravaganza with Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Invisible Hand Appearing as Contestants by Michael Brockley Santa Claus putzes with the buzzer, ringing in midway through the Tooth Fairy’s blitz through Christmas Carols with Mistletoe in the title. When the big elf weighs in, he tosses out bromides about seasonal pastries and the veterinary care of flying reindeer. The old saint dumbfounds Aloha with his ignorance of world cultures, as the Tooth Fairy expounds upon feng shui creches. Monopolizes the Christmas Ghosts category. While the Tooth Fairy stifles the jolly night rambler, the Invisible Hand drones about the purity of self-correcting markets. When the Hand brags about creating the Christmas season, Aloha cues the laugh track from the Star Wars Holiday Special, segueing into Double Jeopardy. The Tooth Fairy builds her lead by knowing about the blue, green and white suit that preceded Coca-Cola. She breezes thr...

Today (July 2) would have been the 86th birthday anniversary of Richard Pflum, a longtime fixture in the Indianapolis poetry community. He died on March 15. Several friends and colleagues honored him by submitting poems. Dick, as close friends called him, was a founding member of the Writers' Center of Indiana (now Indiana Writers Center). He ran the semi-monthly Poetry Salon, a feedback group for poets, and emceed the monthly An Evening With the Muse, which featured a guest poet and an open mic. He loved to frequent open mics in the city, often garnering respect from spoken-word artists. His collections of poetry include  Richard Pflum: A Dream of Salt (Raintree Press), A Strange Juxtaposition of Parts (Writers' Center Press, Indianapolis), The Haunted Refrigerator and Other Poems (Pudding House Press), Listening With Others: Poems Under the Musical Influence (The Muse Rules), and Some Poems to Be Read Out Loud: New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press). Besides poetry,...