Flying Island

    Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 12.21 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! The year of 2021 is the first full year of our new publication schedule where we publish new work the last Friday of every month. We are completing the year with two poetry contributors. We hope you enjoy this issue. Be on the lookout for fee-free submissions in February! We'd love to see your work. Check back at the end of January for the next issue. The Flying Island Journal would also like to welcome our new Creative Nonfiction Editor, Michael Gawdzik. He's looking for new CNF, so prepare your submissions for the fee-free submissions window in February! Wishing you a Happy New Year! Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors & Readers POETRY Charlotte Melin, "Before the Frost" Roger Pfingston, "Tableau" Follow us! Twitter: @JournalFlying Instagram: @flyingislandjournal Are you a writer who is from the Midwest or has close ties to the Midwest? We'd

        Before the Frost In the bouldered prairie sumac flares up red here and there, and bison rest between  stiff spikes of mullein  with wooly leaves. The creek waterfall  has dried to a trickle, the rocks that flank it shelter yet moss in layers once carved by torrents.  Elsewhere, deer bound off into the woods, a spent oriole nest  lies beside the path beneath cottonwoods. After the rain comes, small bird voices will fill every bush and tree one last time before the frost. Charlotte Melin grew up in Indiana and returns to visit. Recently retired from the University of Minnesota, she lives in Northfield and has published widely about German poetry, the environmental humanities, and teaching.

            Tableau   New Year’s Eve, 2020 Emerging snow-blurred out  of the woods, the doe at dusk fulfills our unspoken wish,  though still limping, moving ever closer to stare at the two of us having dinner lit by a new ceiling light, the globe’s hue dialed to a soft sepia, the gift of a handyman friend  who’d asked if we might  prefer degrees of brightness after four decades of on/off. With a centerpiece of lilies,             the table is a simple choice  of fish and rice, bread and wine, glasses raised to the pending year,  the doe, for now, still there. Roger Pfingston has poems in recent issues of Sheila-Na-Gig , Dash , Hamilton Stone Review , Tipton Poetry Journal , Innisfree Poetry Journal , and Valparaiso Poetry Review . His chapbook, What’s Given , is available from Kattywompus Press.