Flying Island

Underground by Jared Carter       The two children – abruptly shoved off the platform into the path of an oncoming train – are not in that instant crushed by the wheels, but instead dissolved against the event horizon of a black hole suddenly materialized out of another galaxy.       Its unknowable surface accepts each of them. The girl becomes a dove caught by the softest, lightest of nets, the boy a silver fish trapped in a riverbank weir.       The subway tunnel with its overhead coffers, the platform, the people standing along the edge, the train braking to a stop – all of this translates into long filaments of irretrievable data.       Agamemnon announces that the wind has risen, and the Achaeans can now set their sails. Bio: Jared Carter’s sixth collection, Darkened Rooms of Summer , was published in 2014 by the University of Nebraska Press. He lives in Indianapolis

Gravity (A Solstice Poem) by Jeffrey Owen Pearson When asked what he would miss while travelling in space, the astronaut said, gravity. And though we reach for the stars, and though it yanked Icarus out of the sky, gravity is like that mother who flicks our ear to put us in our place. It’s that thing that pulls the sun, now at its farthest station, back toward the earth. That dark hand that reminds each plant and animal and man that winter is a time of earth and root. That godlike thing who doesn’t see but watches everything we do and brings us together where we belong. Bio: Jeffrey Owen Pearson’s poems have appeared in The Best of Flying Island, So It Goes, Reckless Writing 2014 Anthology, Tipton Poetry Journal, Flying Island, and Maize. “I have fallen asleep again reading Homer” placed third in the 2014 Writers Digest Poetry Awards. Pudding House Publications published his chapbook Hawaii Slides. A member of the Midwest Writers W

The Desert by Jared Carter       Prolonged exposure to extremes of sun and heat can cause madness, even death, yet there is said to exist one group of nomads who roam the desert unceasingly. Of its members, who have never been studied, only one thing is known.       Before leaving each campsite, they mix quantities of sand with colors extracted from native wildflowers, and spread out a series of vast, intricate diagrams. Such patterns are obscured by the wind within minutes after the tribesmen ride away.              The purpose of these designs is unclear. Thought to be prehistoric in origin, they have never been sketched or photographed. Over the years, the wish to examine them has lured a number of expeditions onto the desert. Their fate is uncertain, for none has ever returned.              Certain adventurers are reported to have withstood the heat and the mirages until they have stumbled across dunes streaked with faint colors. Of these, a few are alleged to have survived, and

When they marry, they make their own vows and their own wedding cake the cutest couple a hyphenated name a trip to Jamaica a strict budget including a hefty mortgage payment a promise to each other never to fake it— — which they break— two children and one who doesn’t make it a nice dinner every Wednesday— steak and baked potatoes or crab cakes a few martinis, gently shaken a decision to relocate mostly for the sake of the children a valiant effort to educate them a modest take in the stock market readjustments along the way and some healthy 401(k)s arrangements for a parent’s wake a quiet cabin at the lake a mess or two— but no grave mistake                     — by Mary M. Brown Bio: Mary M. Brown lives and writes in Anderson, Indiana, a Hoosier not by birth but by long residence and disposition. She taught literature and creative writing at Indiana Wesleyan for many years. Her work appears on the Poetry Foundation a

Congratulations to the the 2016 Pushcart Prize nominations from the Flying Island Island online journal, a publication of the Indiana Writers Center. FICTION "The New Girl at School Talks About Guns," by Robin Lovelace (March 21, 2016) Click here. CREATIVE NONFICTION "Square of Love," by Charlie Sutphin (March 30, 2016) Click here. "A Room of His Own," by Jay S Zimmerman (Oct. 21, 2016)  Click here. POETRY "Five Star Hole," by Grambi Dora (March 29, 2016) Click here. "How to Be a Cop's Wife," by Lindsey Warner (June 6, 2016) Click here. "What to say to a refugee," by Mary M. Brown (Sept. 26, 2016) Click here.