Flying Island

Square of Love by Charlie Sutphin To state the obvious—there were four before there were three. Forever four before the square of love collapsed and only two remained. Still, no peril in the air, not yet. Parents are supposed to die before their children—it’s the law. Four reduces to two, but the departure of the third, leaving none but the one who is me: THAT, my friends, was unwarranted.                                       ____________ On a hot day in August in a better part of town, I’m strolling down the main artery of the neighborhood looking like I don’t belong. Tall and lanky with a drunkard’s gait, I sometimes appear like a transient, especially on weekends. If there was a defining gestalt to my attire, it would comprise a mixture of chaos and serendipity. What is is. So I’m walking the artery of Arden in 90-degree heat wearing blue jeans and a black shirt w...

Five Star Hole by Grambi Dora Iraqi sandstorms whip up the air. Lunch time, the hottest hour The range walk to the dining facility an open bar of AK-47 rounds RPG’s, and IEDs It’s standard to carry whale loads of weaponry and ammo, combat gear at the ready. There might be a little sand in my ears, but I guarantee my M-16 and M-249 seasoned with CLP are locked, cocked and ready to kill.              xxx Cleaning my weapon is an art Hand sanitizer, Q-tips and baby wipes Mom thinks I was use them to keep my ears clean and take showers, while the ample supply of Kotex tampons works magically on bleeding bullet wounds              xxx My battle buddy and I take turns sleeping in the sand after digging our hasty fighting positions with our Army green entrenching tools. The hole is quiet. We listen...

The New Girl at School Talks about Guns By Robin Lovelace Uncle always lived in the other house. By himself. When he was younger, before I was born, he used to be a truck driver. Then he was a drummer for a while with a band called Texas Red. Then he got married but his wife left him after three years. Then he got sick and had to stay in a looney bin hospital for a while. When he got out, he moved into the other house on Mama’s property. Ten miles outside of Glenville, in southern Indiana. He stayed holed up in the other house. Most of the time, in his bedroom that smelled like a man’s armpit. Sometimes, at night, he’d put on his clodhopper boots and light a kerosene lantern and unchain Porter, Mama’s hound dog, and take his gun and Porter up into the thirty-seven acre woods that grew behind Mama’s house and partly behind his. Sometimes in the morning, there‘d be a raccoon, skinned and cleaned and floating headless, in a big pot of cold salt water on Mama’s covered porch. Someti...

Winter Concert                                         for Johanna A youth in black stands at his rack of bells, rocking slightly back and forth—a bird on a wire in sway to the dreadnought drone of a horn. He lifts a mallet just in time, taps a single B flat that sends the sparrow clarinets into an air of important duties and tasks. All the while a warm front moves north into the suburbs, raising up a countryside of mist and fog— measure after measure of silent timpani thunder felt underfoot by concert goers everywhere. They step into the white dark, a people blinking into a new creation, waking to that anvil note that bore them in her rocking lap.           —by Terry Ofner Bio: Terry Ofner grew up in Iowa not far from the Mississippi River. He holds degrees from the University of Iowa, where he atte...