Flying Island

Head Up           by Manon Voice ... shoulders back. Don’t tell them how you struggled to get out of the book laden bed impoverished with broken poetry hooks ringing over your head a quarter widowed wine glass you took with an antidepressant and the taste of your own salt. How you fed the dog and didn’t yourself. How you barely breathed in the shower And clothed yourself in war black because it was easiest to hide in. On the way there was no song somber or sultry enough for the trip, everyday how you survive the loneliness of the driver side the overwhelm of that much control between the breadth of your hands. Don’t tell them how you count miles as the making of a life and numbers grow on you slowly edging you out of risk. Don’t ask yourself “W here have you been? ” after all the “good mornings” and dirt coffee taken with emails. No one after noticed how your legs hang from the desk chair nor ever touch the floor,...

Three poems by Norbert Krapf: Meeting My Grandson in Regensburg A whole Popo cupped in a hand a tiny heart beating against my chest and puffs of breath kissing my neck, I look down upon an innocence asleep and would live long enough to love and protect and sing it forever. Cheerios in Bed in Berlin You are in bed in Berlin and smiling brightly as you hold a yellow box of American Cheerios your Colombian mother bought you as special treat. In the next frame your head is tilted and thrown back, mouth wide open, as you salivate your circles of O oats! Little things delight you the most. Little man who savors what is small and not always easy or cheap to find, you readily give yourself to showing how deeply you appreciate what comes your way. Your smile is your expression of gratitude, your thanks come out baked half German, half English, and your Love is expressed Wuff-oooh! You don't want to be anywhere else. Your favorite munchies are in ...

Restless Night drags to a close. At dawn, the hospital is waking. with equipment clatter ,  hallway chatter,  meal cart’s squeaky wheel, breakfast on a tray-table,   meds being fed,  doctors rounding patients, bed rumpled, alarms  if I get up, staff rollover  at 7. I sit up, note  where I am, wish I were home. I  look out the window   as molten gold explodes on the horizon, fills  the seams in the landscape, blankets the hospital, sucks  all the air, overflows all boundaries, slops  over the edges,   spangles  the earth. – by Ed Alley From Ed Alley: "I woke up in the hospital after treatment for pneumonia. This poem resulted. I've always been fascinated by words, what is said, what is meant, what is left out. Poetry challenges me to go deeper into words, to make them come alive."

Winter Mornings on 17th Street by Samuel T. Franklin The sky tumbles to Earth and shatters to ice. Snow folds like colorless oceans and shifts, greedy, across the trees. The creek shines clear and clean as wiped porcelain. A man in dark wool studies the frozen currents, drops twigs and pine needles on the ice and tries to conjure some prophecy of spring. Wind slips subtle as a thorn through jackets and gloves. I do not know this city, and the ravens are quiet. The man in dark wool stands, hopeless, the twigs piled at his feet, burned by invisible fire. Samuel T. Franklin is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and Bloomington. His first book, The God of Happiness (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), was published in 2016. He can be found at samueltfranklin.wordpress.com.