Flying Island

Sanctuary Before entering the woods alone along  resolved riverbed, I hid my bicycle behind the creek’s bridge. Softened under spring’s worm moon, braced for nettle’s greetings,  I hopped over cracked clay mud, under canopy of cottonwoods, and in the shade I would walk  those hours, whispering my poems. Now under  late October hunter’s moon, this arc, this sanctuary  still silences me, and my shadow passes easily  along the trace as curious clearweed. Again  to pause, small among the sycamores, where  a cacophony of crickets, the stuttering trilling  of frogs, form a chorus of prayers from the marsh. Laura Schwartz is a librarian in Geneva, Indiana, a small town along the Wabash River surrounded by remnants of the Limberlost Wetlands, so she spends much of her time with books or exploring the nearby nature preserves, especially Rainbow Bottom.  She graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington with a BA in Comparative Literature, and has always enjoyed reading and writing poetry. S

Teratoma Parasitic twin—unknowing,           abandoned quark— Little Matroyshka, still growing         within the dark Dimensions of your flesh. Almost           aware, you feel A strange malaise, not quite a ghost           but something real— A sibling that has lost its way           inside of you, And really only wants to play           at peekaboo. Jared Carter lives in Indianapolis . 

At the Pawnee National Grasslands Colorado Eastern Plains The only sound out here is wind pouring through wind. This is where the sun and moon scrape into one another and blur. The Chalk Bluffs. Buttes seemingly rise             out of their own stone coffins. Mice bone cracks             the mouths of owls. The world of the dead collides             with the world of the dead. Hammerblows of wind pummel the dusk,             batter the buffeting at my feet. The buffalo grass keeps bending             toward me, ploughing, pleading, knowing it must go on, certain it will             one day get in. Get into me and through. George Kalamaras served as Poet Laureate of Indiana in 2014 and 2015. He is the author of twenty-four collections of poetry (fifteen full-length books and nine chapbooks). One of his recent books, To Sleep in the Horse’s Belly: My Greek Poets and the Aegean Inside Me (Dos Madres Press, 2023), just received the Indiana Poetry Book Award for the two-year period 2

  Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 9.27 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Laurel Smith , Charlotte Melin , and Megan Bell . 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

Every morning you woke before me ahead of the sun you brushed your hair and chose your clothes for work: the muted red sheath with matching sweater or a skirt  with white blouse, stockings, loafers— your look more collegiate than school marm. You’d go downstairs and make coffee, toast, then set out lunch bags prepped the night  before, our kitchen radio playing Top-40 tunes: Motown or John Denver drifting up to us  as we took turns in the bathroom to start the day. Is that why mornings hurt now, why you push a button before dawn to call staff to your side? No easy songs to hum as the sky lightens. The red dress long gone. Laurel Smith lives in Vincennes, Indiana. She finds the best poetry by listening, especially listening outdoors. Smith’s poems have been featured in New Millenium Writings , Flying Island , Natural Bridge , Tipton Poetry Journal, JAMA, English Journal, and Mapping the Muse.

Midsummer  After the evening shift  we walked the trail  circling the small lake, past the pink fireweed to woods flanked by rocky slopes covered with blueberries and lichen. Midsummer in Oslo  and the sky stayed light,  the sun drawing a continuous arc  along the horizon that curved up after midnight. As we watched endless day fade to shadows under the conifers,  the darkest place,  we came face to face  with something that stopped us  in utter silence— a European elk crossing the path. All these years later at dawn when loud warbling fills the trees, I think about the moment before the creature vanished,  about the shared dormitory room  that went with the temp job,  the foraging we did thriftily, about Nixon resigning then on flickering black-and-white TV and insurrection hearings now, about our return flights home to a country we hoped had changed into a place where we might find  a lifetime of experiences filled with love and idealism rather than turmoil  and be at times speechles

Coming of Age In the end, mother, I crawled out of your door like I crawled out of your womb with a fire in my belly; hungry, angry, alone. Displaced, desperate for the unknown. Wailing into the morning light, I flailed,  then, I didn’t. Suckling on the sun, I looked at the world with kitten eyes.  Then, I made the world look back at me. On your front porch,  on a county road in Indiana,  on God's command.  I made my way out of  my Coming of Age  with the past in my pocket  and  now in my hand.  A brave child. I was eighteen.  Megan Bell is privileged to have served Fort Wayne, Indiana as a reference librarian for the past decade. When she is not working, she spends time with her husband and two children. They enjoy the outdoors – riding bikes, hiking, and swimming. She digs all 70s singer/songwriter music, any cat she meets, and she saves all her extra pennies for travel.

  Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 7.26 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Rebecca Longenecker , Brian Builta , and Roger Pfingston . 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