Flying Island

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 5.22 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! We have three contributors in poetry. We hope you enjoy this issue. Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? Send us your work! Submissions info can be found in the tab above. Links to each piece in this edition below. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Poetry Editor & Readers POETRY Becca Downs, "Peace Offerings" Aydin Akgün, "White" Cloe Watson, "Flash" Are you a writer who is from the Midwest or has close ties to the Midwest? We'd love to read your work. Submissions info in the tab above.  Support the Indiana Writers Center!

Peace Offerings it’s early enough windows still black I see myself when I flip the switch so quiet I can hear faint buzzing of kitchen light heat cranks on, down the street a dog barks to be let inside I can’t hear the door but it’s quiet again and I imagine her at the foot of a man outside the wind presses its face to my kitchen window, envious of steaming coffee and my gentle aloneness– I can’t see him  but I know his scent, feel his cheek on mine I’m reminded of doves how they’re never late, not really, and the odor of olives rotting, shriveled on a branch half-forgotten, perhaps in a box in my closet. I stand at the window so long my face fades with pre-dawn black, morphs into a fence,  a small tulip tree budding like a teen, a garden plot waiting. Becca Downs is a poet, freelance writer, and MFA candidate with the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University. Though currently residing in Denver, she lived in Indiana for 30 years and still considers herself a Hoosier at hear...

White The Kodak smile of my mother,  the evening drink of my father,  the milk moustache of my baby brother,  the painted walls of the small kitchen,  the sheepskin rug of the living room,  the pressed collar of my uniform,  the broken chalk of the classroom,  the round buttons of my first suit… And then, the bright surprise on the x-ray, the large tumors on my spine, the cotton sheets of the hospital, and finally, the shroud,  that misty shroud that covers it all  before everything turns black.  Aydin Akgün was born and raised in Izmir, Turkey.  He graduated from the Lycée Saint Joseph in Izmir and moved to the United States in 1995. He received a B.A. in both International Relations and French from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2000, and  an M.A. in Creative Writing in both poetry and fiction from Johns Hopkins University in 2009.  He lives and works in Washington D.C.

Flash  Your hands on my first digital camera, your nails so round and soft at the capture.  What am I then? Ripped ballerina tights or a half-released bun? Just don’t let me see. I want you to do it, girl—he showed me what bodies can do, and now, my hands don’t belong on anything. I am 11, and already I wish to fracture the universe with a flash. Let us be Then, let us be  the arm you used to shoulder me into the frame, into you. You can’t imagine what parts of a man can be stored  in a silver box. That insistent arm of yours has kept me alive. Cloe Watson is a graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University. Her work has been published in Blue Unicorn , The Windsor Review , Oakland Review , Grand Little Things , The Racket Journal , Wingless Dreamer , Beyond Words Literary Magazine and Defunkt Magazine .