Flying Island

Going Dark             “To know the dark, go dark.” – Wendell Berry I am in the night place where more dark exists for opened eyes than closed and silence pushes into the ears. Here fire is a tongue. I have held fire, have followed the lipped contours of a riverbank in search of the mouth from which it pours. Now I kneel down, to grope my way. The ground is trembling. If I wake from here, into a bright, loud world, I will be mute and visionless. Now I reach through throated black to feel where I am and I touch surprising water which speaks in the palm of my hand.                         —by Liza Hyatt Bio: Liza Hyatt is the author of The Mother Poems (Chatter House Press, 2014); Stories Made of World (Finishing Line Press, 2013); and Under My Skin (WordTech Editions...

Looking East by Catherine Grossman   On the deck above Cayuga Lake awake before my family and the dawn, on hand for the sun’s blaring rise. It’s done now, nothing large enough as a cloud to get in its way— a terrifying white gold track blazes across calm water— reprimanding me— you are far from home.   I am, but that’s a fool’s trail built for water spiders.  I’ll stay here and track what’s left of me after hours of not breathing—that is, I’m not sure of anything. The wind is stirring.  Maybe I am this rented house, its dusty corners and mementos hanging on walls. I have no memories.  The water is blue, black and lemon green where weeds show through. The wake is a meter-less lento, licking the shore, the pace of a tongue on an ice cream cone. Now, tender skins of summer leaves— sweet cymbals, again and again, twisting in their places, playing continuo, continuo—a woodwind now, a vireo. Bio: Catherine G...

Eye Patch by Marjie Giffin I was a kindergarten pirate but bagged no bounty. No swashbuckling for me, no gold ear bangles. No red, knotted bandana, no breech pants or boots. But my eye patch glistened! Fabric shimmered with tears. Name calling hurt, and it blurred my sight. Flipped elastic caused pain to tender scalp and pride. Far better to be Four Eyes than a pirate at five. Far better to sport curls than a patch over eyes. Bio: Marjie Giffin is an Indianapolis resident who writes poetry and nonfiction. She has published four regional histories as well as recent poems in Poetry Quarterly, The Flying Island, Story Circle Journal, and a local blog. In her spare time, she is active in workshops at the Indiana Writers Center and with Story Circle Network.

Painful by Jay S Zimmerman Quiet Sunday, early morning Sitting among bird sounds, last rustle of evening cicadas, light creeping around trees, She is gone now Leaving with moonlight My heart empty Like the lonely birdbath At the edge of the garden Void of water Longing Pierced by thorns of rose bushes stumbling half heartedly into the day Tears from hollow eyes Drunk on loneliness Broken from falling Into the blood lilies Memories of her footsteps As the wood floors creaked behind her And the screened door slammed shut Bio: “I was born in the concrete caverns of New York amid the trolley bells and sounds of subways, travelled south to Miami Beach and thrived in the warm sands and salt air dancing to the musical rhythms of klesmer, cha cha and bossa nova, finally venturing to the dark soil, flat farmlands and rolling hills of the Midwest, where my roots have grown and been nourished for...

FEET by Maureen O'Hern I watched my feet -- left, right, left, right -- move mechanically over miles of hospital terrazzo, a sameness that I trod back and forth, not daring to look up for fear I would see how far it stretched and how it merged into the sameness of the walls. The carpet in the hospital waiting room was green and black, evoking bright slime on fetid water, and hypnotic in a threatening, slithery sort of way. Sometimes that was the foil to my feet. Left, right, left, right. Back and forth. I hated that carpet. Where dementia led, we followed, Dad and I. Step by numb step. Sometimes I watched my feet go down the stairs at home. Our house was an old   two-flat, and the stairs were hardwood, overlaid with a tile path bordered on both sides by ancient glassy varnish, ever evocative of the apprenticeship I served as a girl, cleaning those varnished corners with the point of an old paring knife carefully, carefully, so as not to scratch the wood. It was...

she does not tolerate paradox well nor him for that matter nor her cat who likes to lie across her shoulders while a chocolate labrador sits at her feet in stark obedience ambiguity sits uneasy with her she demands her facts black and white unstirred with no nonsense loyal lapdogs work best in her mind:  low turnover no need to retrain even her thoughts or plow new earth of any kind she was done with all that a long time ago when some festered hurt pestered her long after the initial pain had passed now she grows thistles with the hope that some Sweet William or Jack-in-the-Pulpit might unexpectedly poke through that is why he stays to discover if he is the true wildflower she sees and not the mass of contradictions he knows himself to be                               --by Barry Harris               ...

Chorizo by Teri Costello Huevos con chorizo on Sunday mornings, a snapshot of San Diego I had never seen. Your childhood. Noisy, rowdy, poor. Steaming platters of frightening food served by the dark-eyed waitress, and you, buttering my bread. The cooks singing to the yipping Mexican music on the radio, cranked up. And you, my green-eyed Sicilian, fascinating me, naïve White Girl. Playing, laughing, listening to gospel music roar from the Baptist church.   Nobody hid when the unusual rain came to Southern California that morning; Perfect was everywhere. Do you remember the weekend in Ensenada that year, climbing the rock face stoned, Phil Harris in Hussong’s? It’s different there now. Have you heard? Bio: Originally from San Diego and a CPA by profession, Teri Costello took down her shingle in 2011 and moved to Indianapolis after living in Los Angeles and Chicago. In her words, “Life now is sweet, close, and personal.”