Flying Island

Helicopter Poet by Nancy Pulley I hover over creation, stroke a metaphor as if brushing the hair from my grandson’s forehead, pull a poem back from the hot fire of the critic as I did my son’s fingers from our autumn campfire. I can’t bear for the world to see them through any except a mother’s eyes. How I cherish the fact that they came from me, wonder if I should trust others to love enough to help with their raising. A teacher suggests taking out the heart of one, and a nearly famous poet calls them “sentimental.” Yet try as I might to build poems like bridges, I keep birthing them from some romantic liaison with air, sky, tree, river or the occasional star that falls to earth like a God. Words are not brightly colored Lego blocks to be torn apart and repurposed. They cling to me, my little monkeys, my sweet offspring, daughters coming in from the yard, peach juice glistening on their young, pink lips. Nancy Pulley 's ...

My Sister’s Clothes by Nancy Pulley Mementos wait in the family home for me to muster up some kind of ancestral tough love-- throw away the past. How many keepsakes do I need to sift through to find a solid lump of grief? How many tchotchkes will fit in an already crowded shadowbox? I’m trying to find comfort in postcards sent to my grandmother, Mom’s handmade doilies, in the metal closet where my sister’s clothes hang empty waiting to be placed in that old wooden storage trunk of my heart. Nancy Pulley 's poems have appeared in Tipton Poetry Journal, the Indiannual, Flying Island, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, Passages North, Plainsong, the Sycamore Review, and the Humpback Barn Festival collection. In 1992, she won the Indiana Writers Center poetry chapbook contest, resulting in the publication of a chapbook, Tremolo of Light.

First Jazz Solo by Nancy Pulley Curly hair trills to my son’s shoulders and his boyish  face sprouts the dark grace notes of a struggling beard. His quick jazz improv sounds like footsteps running away or laughter in another room, an independent dance with just a hint of uncertainty— and that is the part of the performance that steals my heart, his need a different rhythm, a syncopation that turns the talent into pure jazz,  the irregular beat of his pumped heart sounding in the stops and starts of the trombone slide, his young man’s lips pursed on the mouthpiece as if kissing someone goodbye. Bio: Nancy Pulley is a graduate of Indiana Central College—now the University of Indianapolis. Her poems have appeared in The Flying Island, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, Passages North, Plainsong, The Sycamore Review, Humpback Barn Collection, A Linen Weave of Themes, and The Tipton Poetry Journal, as well as other journals and publications. She w...

Night Sky at Lake Abanake by Nancy Pulley We awoke at 3 in the morning walked out after rain to see the black sky and stars all over as if some God had stumbled with a treasure chest. Straight from sleep, I rose up into the vast map that slaves used to steer themselves to freedom. My head still wrapped in mist, the mystical road stretched above me. I tried to open my eyes wide enough, to open my mind, to waken the sleepy spirit,   bring light down through the lens of understanding, suck it into the black hole of consciousness, name the glorious, the lucid, the spectacular common light that beams forever overhead, exists as I want to exist; vast, at the edge of knowledge, far from normal. I became dizzy and at the same time as centered as I would ever be, confused about my place in a dazzling universe, yet eager to start some ray of light across the inviting darkness. Bio: Nancy Pulley is a graduate of Indiana Central College—now the University of ...