Flying Island

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 5.31 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by Janet E. Irvin , Zachary Danker t, Susan Mason Scott , and Nancy Botkin . Inspired to send us your fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction? For more info on how to submit, see the tab above. Thank you for reading, Flying Island Editors and Readers

Somewhere between morning and now Somewhere between morning and now as I harvest beans, deadhead marigolds, and cradle the plump, sun-warmed flesh of a Cherokee purple, I remember you and me lying on the hill above Athens, Ohio not Greece, in the grass we called curly  for the way the blades embraced our naked  sunbaked bodies as we made love. Somewhere between that dawn and this noon our skins abandoned  their tight fit, sagged, sloughed free like the blanched peel of a tomato stewed in its own juice, its seeds, like ours, passed on to future gardens. Chores done, I step into the dim present,  to watch you napping, still as an effigy on a royal tomb, hands cupping the place  where I once laid my head to savor the beating pulse of love after lust. My heart stutters over the desire to lie once more where we once lay somewhere between morning and now. Janet E. Irvin is a career educator, author, and poet. Writing as J.E. Irvin, she is the author of seven mystery/...

Wild Sweet William  I am trying to caution you  to the change in the weather, but  you are preoccupied pressing black-eyed susans so tightly into a book  there is no air left for the future You are always doing this, I remember  last June, bergamot in my  coffee pot in the waist  of your pants Flicking through page after  page of specimen  I asked, “what is the  desired outcome?” and you  stepped outside, returned fists full of New England aster Instead of writing I  daydream geraniums, your fingertips pressing them through my eye sockets It was not so hard before,  when I gathered  refuge under your thumb which  pressed sunday mornings closed   with melancholy  made reluctant before you noticed the  first bulbs beyond the fence In my half  of the study, and sit down to write, but  I can’t resist calling “there are only  so many flowers  a man can press”  Next year when bun...

Perennial Carry one half cup of death, shards of bone, bits of skin, a scorched vessel. Carry pink and red camellias shedding organs, barely alive, dust-colored at the edges. Carry the downy feathered bird who fell from the nest then Carry the empty home of woven yarns, bed with feathers sifting gravity to dress the hollow bowl. Carry fire, burned hands that sieve through burdened hands leaving the bone soup. Carry the bitter sulfurous root. Carry half an antidote to atone for father below the etched stone, scatter here the solemn cup like pollen sneezing the solitary season. Carry drops of dew to baste union of two. Carry soon mother’s last spasm as maxim: don’t live(die) among old people. Carry a rose, snug bud longing for youth to fruit. Carry the spade of soil and compost, knead sun for onions and lettuces, cut in fat for hungry worms. Carry spring rain, aroma of scallions, mud, and filtered sun to stir into stew. Carry another half cup, an offering softer for her, to season ...

Waiting We all do it. In the airport. In line at the grocery store. We wait for the swelling to subside, the guest to leave, the antibiotics to kick in. Endless waiting in doctors’ offices. The outer one, but also the inner one where you sit in a flimsy flowered gown. Not to mention the nervous wait for the biopsy report. I once rolled out cookie dough, set the over timer, and then moved out of range so I couldn’t hear it. When I finally came back in, the buzzer became an alarm. Kids used to pull the fire alarm in high school, and we knew the drill: file outside and wait in the cold for the all clear. You often hear someone say those five minutes were an eternity! How much time is wasted waiting for Christmas or summer vacation, only to be let down. Forget about prince charming meeting you by the pool, the one who also kept you waiting by the phone. Daisy Buchanan waited for the longest day of the year and then missed it. Who hasn’t waited for the chance to say, “Why don’t you take a f...