Flying Island

Dear Flying Island Readers: Welcome to the 11.29 Edition of the Flying Island Journal! In this edition we publish poems by John Kruschke , Courtney Hitson , and William Teets . A big congratulations to our 2024 Pushcart nominees! We also wanted to announce that Mary Brown, who has served as the Poetry Editor for the Flying Island Journal for over four years, is stepping down and Hiromi Yoshida will be taking her place as Poetry Editor. We want to thank Mary for all of her years of dedication to the Indiana Writers Center's literary magazine. We also want to thank Marjie Giffin for her years of dedication as a reader for Flying Island . Mary, Hirmoi, and Marjie were a fantastic team, and we're excited to start a new chapter with Hiromi and her new team of readers, Tony Brewer and Joseph Kerschbaum. 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

The Sun Shines Fluidly on Every House The sun shines fluidly on every house,  spilling over the sheep and cattle  in view of the cowboy brothers (twins  – by different fathers – it’s a long story),  while at the water’s edge a crab  scuttles unnoticed by a cat  dozing beside an adolescent girl  weighing her options, curious of the scorpion poised  at the hooves of a centaur (yes,  a half-horse man roams this landscape) with bow and arrow slung open-carry,  galloping to meet his chimeric brethren  the sea-goat at the seaside where a gorgeous boy pours them wine and two fish swim together connected by a luminous thread,  which, star by star, connects to every  creature in this scene because  the sun shone fluidly in every house the day each one was born,  and would keep shining even if  the cat appraised its options,  and the scorpion claimed to be crab and the bull converted to ram and the brothers came ...

Another sort of yellow, a prose poem by Courtney Hitson Another sort of yellow As if a baby carriage’s canopy saturated in sun. As if yellow were a ruffian. As if Helvetica repackaged into paint-tubes. As if the yellow elixir of personhood I let stale in grief’s fridge. As if the depth my father’s absence affixed to each moment. As if a harvest moon leaked through a spigot. As if the unuttered yellow relief of a finality. As if amber crosshatched with neon. As if the persona formed by gold’s pseudonym. As if pollen could foam. As if a yellow truth began to thaw murky. As if yellow time-traveled and grew fond of its insignificance. As if a golden velvet’s creamy plush. As if your alternate endings lined up in heats to race towards never. As if your smallness in the universe took shelter in a yellow tent.  Originally hailing from central Indiana, Courtney Hitson now lives in Key West and teaches English at the College of the Florida Keys. She currently has work forthcoming in Allium...

Ring Around the Rosie    A grey-bearded beatnik sells Christian candy bars door to door, a relatively-famous bluesman blows a Hey Joe harp on the corner block Old Mother Hubbard hooks herself for a bone and I realize Chicken Little is no liar Trust is a myth created by the Big Bad Wolf, who makes me into a modern-day Little Boy Blue So I duck into the basement of the Dugout Bar and prepare for Revelation All until you call my cell All until Dr. John shoos me to fly away home to where you wait  with open arms  I stagger to you softly  in our house built from bricks Gift candy bars and hum a long-lost song You smile and embrace me warm But more than the sky is about to fall  Will fall Has fallen Our lives made from nothing but straw William Teets is a writer born in Peekskill, New York, who has recently relocated to Southeast, Michigan. His poetry and prose has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Ariel Chart , Drunk Monkeys ,...