Flying Island

Mercy of Errand I walk into the co-op grocery carrying two empty tote bags and the weight of the world. The weight of my clients’ fears and pain, their failing marriages and troubled children, their parents’ cruelty and indifference.   The burden of knowing that my friends and family  and body  ageing  will become burdensome. The pressure of worrying whether the money will last as long as our bodies do. The crushing rush of despair as democracy’s weaknesses and climate change engulf us, our damaged body politic   too puny and confused to lift  even half-filled sandbags into place. I run into friends. When is the next trip to the lake? Whose album release party comes up next? Did you know that  to remove the smell of skunk from your dog you need baking soda and laundry soap and at least a gallon of hydrogen peroxide? I eat lunch. Sweet pulled pork, creamy ravioli, lima beans with raisins, a rich...

Never Just a Game she tells me as we sit at the table,  the board before us a map of choices, a rack of identities to try on  and take off like a coat once loved, now thread-bare, pockets loaded  with memories like stones. Do we play against each other or the game? Easy enough to place my pieces wherever I want, sweep everything aside, but desire is hottest when it’s thwarted the tension building with each move weighed,  considered—the flirting comment,  the quick look down, a glancing touch butterfly soft along the curve of back. Almost the story of when we met,  the story we take with us like a scarf through meetings with friends, colleagues,  the familiar piece we can display and say,  Why, this unlikely thing?  We’re trying out new paths new ways to test and rest against the other, to find this small success or that as territories shift and pieces web their way across the board. We choose. And each choice tangles  with the others unt...

Nkata Lënapeowsi “I am [an] Indian and in this town I will never be a saint.” - Joy Harjo “Santa Fe” Here the waters and the people move shielding themselves from the gentle folding of land, trees, and water. Here we came to rest. And the trees and the land and  the waters have been folded beneath, resting as unkempt streets, odor heavy Bradford pears sterilize it all. Rest, the end of our ongoing exile, unreached as we dissolve like ink  blotches into settler denuded land. Relentless need to move along through lands we recognize as fractured, sense they were once familiar. Linger over bone fragments of extinct pigeons, burrowed roots of deceased chestnuts. Our days dogged by historians,  lawyers, petty poets, who circle praise of their murderous kin. Each word, each fiction, flash-bangs to chase out their guilt, us. Sainthood over reparations, over simple healing. Nkata. Perhaps for the flash-bangs to stop. To hear spoken the truth of our relationship. Nkata....

To be Held by a Horse You of the global eyes  mounted sideways on your long, sturdy face.  How is it that I may stare longingly at you, my straight-ahead  predator eyes fixed  on your round haunches, sleek  neck, and wind-tossed mane  without even a flinch or flicker  from your flanks? You trust my human more than I  trust myself, more open than I could be in the face of such threat.  Somehow, I think, it’s not my arms  squeezing you close like some forgotten toy,  nor my worshipful gaze into your long-lashed,  beauty queen eyes. I doubt you much care for my human touch, or perhaps you do seek that rhythm, the drawn-out, tender strokes,  the searching that reveals  how you, too, have been moved  by a strange and persistent hand.  Darling pony face, in all our glide, rock, and whisper,  in the stretch of my hips over yours,  in the muscular rise and fall of your back between my open thighs burns an ...

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 6.27 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Curtis L. Crisler , Megan Bell , and Matthew Freeman . 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

My Debbie Littlejohn Says…         At this juncture, just lie to me. Tell me that the poinsettias will blossom on Friday. That the soil will be rich in minerals and runoff. Tell me that the bodies slapping will render good sex. Our lips moist with want and tongues panting. Just lie that the smile on your wrinkling face, I put there with love and sweat for ancient things that are new now—us old. I still see us together,  in that line for future stars and naked footed-nights in optimal supreme lemongrass. Lie to me,  but not like a politician, more like a child that's scared she will lose her breath because her mama told her that one man would replace another man in her life. If you can't lie to me correctly, why are we together? This is an ultimatum born from the smile of a soul-stealer—a man. Place  your head on pillow. Let me smell your breath enter my nose, tickle the hairs. Let me feel coarse hair against the back of my legs. Le...

I want to stay home from work today I want to stay home from work today What that really means is, I want to organize junk drawers full of building blocks, dried out ink pens, and half empty pill bottles, the accumulated detritus of twenty years. I will make shrines in our living room – memorials to the place God has met me. I absolutely will not part with birthday cards including your handwriting. Bury me in piles of carefully, crafted lines. I simply cannot toss away a lifetime.  I want to stay home from work today What that really means is, I want to vacuum carpets littered with popcorn hulls and dirty shoe prints. The hullabaloo of the kids and friends. Frenzied from togetherness and video games forgetting about mom and her strange notion that carpets must be minded like a newborn baby – cared for, tended to, the dust removed tenderly and lovingly, with reverence. Never has a rug been so cherished. The fibers filled with appreciation for home. One day, I will rip it out with my...