Editor’s Note
FLARE: The Flagler Review is proud to present this summer’s online edition. With so many amazing entries this year for our award-winning print publication, we felt the need to add an additional edition to give our readers access to even more of the inspiring work we’ve been receiving. Each piece in this summer edition was chosen because it lives up to our mission of showcasing colorful, vibrant works from passionate writers and artists. We hope that you enjoy these selections as much as we have!
Taylor Diamond
Editor, Summer Online Edition
Fiction
Ishiganto by John Soltysiak
“Hugging you feels like home,” she said.
But I wasn’t sure I knew what home felt like.
Her tiny Japanese apartment seemed worlds away from the States.
I’m Going to Kick Some Ass by James Hanna
I studied her mug shot, memorizing her face. She was a boney woman in her early twenties. Her forehead was broad, her nostrils flared, her cheek bore a menacing scar.
Alder Street by Blake Kilgore
On the August night Simon Kane turned seven years old black clouds gathered and crept slow along the earth. The raindrops whispered at first, but suddenly increased to a drumming roar that commanded silence, awe. The birthday song was drowned out and the nervous singers stopped, giggling.
Poetry
Non-poisonous by Carol Matos
Watching a fawn arch its spine
and track its parents’ prints in near darkness,
a woman exaggerates her memories,
the cruelties that invade her sleep—
Cinder by Carol Matos
As if born into a pink species
she seeks hues of her favorite color—
a singular passion like a prospector panning
for gold in a cold river. She wears blushing
I Hold the Wolf by the Ears by By C.T. Salazar
It is 1995 and a gunshot has big-
banged inside the courtroom where my mother
is working. I am three, and two rooms over
where everything is set to sudden motion—
