Flying Island

The Blooms by Shawn Chase Winstons Smoke ‘em Crackling strings Aroma filling my ears Staccato flame burning Velvety plume vibrating in the air Choking my sensibilities Beautiful daggers slicing me open Writhing chills coalesce upon my skin Orgasmic agony screams out from within Complacency stands staunchly without Suddenly I forget where I am My identity frozen in the inhalation Suspended in the lungs of plucked metallic wire Waiting to resonate once again Blessed are the trapped moments Discovering solace Recognizing malice Releasing pent-up scorn Dispensed to purity Behold the blooms Shawn Chase is a pharmacist living in Indianapolis. He says he is a product of the love and compassion surrounding him. More of his writing can be found at unexpectedsharing.com

Riding the Wild Wind By Gregory Troxell — After Frederic Remington’s A Buck-Jumper (1893) Reaching high with one hand, He grabs a fistful of wind And it bolts him into the air, Face to the sky, He scrapes the white belly of an indifferent cloud, And strains to bring his other hand ‘round, To tighten his hold, and buck up his hope. He spins, and there’s the ground! Then gone in a blink! Now the hurricane swells, and with twice the strength, Spins him flat so the sun spikes his eyes. He’s riding the wild wind, now and forever, As the sky and the earth reverse, Then right themselves, then back, and over again, then over . . . Panic and joy joust for control of his soul As the ground and the sounds fade away, And shooting toward heaven he feels nothing, hears . . . nothing. And then, as suddenly as it all began, It ends, as the rock hard earth finds its mark, Slamming his back and stealing his breath. Pulling him...

The poets in your state capital have asked if you still believe in Santa Claus by Michael Brockley Once you couldn’t name a jazz artist if you were spotted every consonant in the artist’s last name. Now you have difficulty distinguishing between the joy and sorrow in a saxophone solo. You spend hours with your sock monkey disciples sharing memories of county fair queens driving the lead cars in your hometown’s demolition derbies. But these days your friends drive German cars with St. Christopher statues two-stepping with bobblehead hula dancers on their dash boards. The patron saint of lost causes has opened his sleeping bag across the back seat of your Motown jalopy. He’s spent centuries perfecting the art of making cradles from civilization’s detritus and has mined your record collection of troubadours with recluse biographies and grave robber voices for album covers to shellac on the cradle headboards as hex signs. On nights when you can’t sleep, you regale the patron saint of ...

Retain This Copy for Your Records by Michelle Brooks I am a room after everyone has left. Emptied out, you are free to imagine anything could happen. There’s a song playing, the sound so faint that you can’t tell where it’s coming from and the vending machines offer all the candies you remember from childhood – Fifth Avenue Bars, Milky Ways, Whatchamacallits. In front of all this proffered sweetness, you wonder if this is what dying feels like. You buy a candy bar, sit down on the floor, and surrender to the ghosts because it’s all that you can think to do. Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small,   (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy , (Storylandia Press). She says she s pent a summer in Gary with a now ex-boyfriend. She says she loves Gary, even as the boyfriend did not fare as well. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.

--> IN THE NAME OF THE . . . By George Hook As if the cycles of schismatic violence in faith that had torn Protestant from Roman Catholic and, more crucially to this night of nights, Roman Catholic from Protestant centuries ago are being revealed to her as merely preclusive skirmishes fought in the space of what came to only shards of seconds and minutes when set against this solitary moment on this date of all dates in this country town of Se Haute Indiana with its little more than 3,000 souls of all places that has somehow found itself drawn from across the span of preordained immutable destiny to become a millennial proving ground in a reemergent and evidently climacteric struggle between the Worded and the Wordless, she here and now bears witness to the inexpugnable walk of the True Father with each ready step—narrowly straight in its equable path like the soldered-bound arms of the cruciform doornails she has been wearing on a leather strap around her neck awak...

Duluth by James Figy Like some Devil’s Kettle, the storm poured black droplets from nowhere we had ever been, to spill holy buckets of frigid rain, to scour our every pathway—this water, to wash Duluth’s dirtiest side streets, to wet the Superior shoreline, to melt into puddles like cloying blueberry ice cream from the Portland Malt Shoppe, but once the weather passed, I glanced two of her: one in the shallow reflection pool covering most of the pier, the woman there, moving toward the light- house; and also the woman here, who kept looking out after the storm until she saw something worthwhile in the lake’s long horizon. J ames Figy is a Hoosier living in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a graduate of the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. His creative work has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Hobart, Cheap Pop, and the anthology Bad Jobs and Bullshit, among others. You can follow him (@jafigy) and check out the Fail Better interview series he runs for Fear No Lit. ...

The editors of the Flying Island and the Indiana Writers Center are pleased to announce the journal's 2018 Pushcart Prize nominees: FICTION “In the Name of the ...” by George Hook Click here. CREATIVE NONFICTION “Running in the Dark” by Maureen Deaver Purcell Click here. POETRY “River That Never Ran” by Mary M. Brown Click here. “Gravegarden” by Andrea Dunn Click here. “Cheerios in Bed in Berlin” by Norbert Krapf Click here. “Head Up” by Manon Voice Click here. Barbara Shoup, executive editor Rachel Sahaidachny, Indiana Writers Center program manager David M. Hassler, managing and fiction editor Julianna Thibodeaux, creative nonfiction editor JL Kato, poetry editor

The Slow Movement by Edmund F. Byrne With Ashkenazi at the keys Giuliani signaled for the Brahms and thunder filled reality reverberating in my ears more turbulence than I could bear I made some tea and tried to read old arguments that God exists while hardly sure that I was there or that the world takes note of me with or without divinity Just then the tempo changed and peaceful strings began to coax from gentle horns soft mellow chords that sang inside of me a tonal prayer which urged the universe to care Tea and book I put aside to let some tears reply Amen to the awesome orchestrations that ensued in celebration of what life can be with hope for love From Edmund F. Byrne: “I'm a retired professor of philosophy. Spent most of my active years at newly established IUPUI. I'm still involved with the Journal of Business Ethics and review books for online anthology called MiSWR.”

SCAR TISSUE By Ela Aktay When you cut yourself and get a wound, after a period of time there’s this weird-looking permanent mark on your skin. You know, where tissue builds up and creates a scar. Well, I have a tiny starfish-shaped one on my belly button. I love that scar. Every once in awhile, I lift my shirt and touch the ever-so-slightly ridged skin. It’s my battle wound. Never mind that it was a battle I lost, I still love that scar. I’m in the tattoo store. My heart is racing like the Energizer Bunny. I’ve got the classic sweaty palms, lump in the throat, pit in the stomach. Just breathe and do it. I lie down on the table and grip the sides so tightly I counteract the deep breaths that I thought would actually relax me. I shut my eyes tight and brace myself for the stabbing pain to pierce through me. Faster than I can say, “ok, I’m ready,” it’s done. Really? That’s it? Seriously? That didn’t hurt at all. I walk out of the store beaming. Look at me—I’m co...