Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Review: Dawn Macdonald Reads Wahidah Tambee’s Typographical Collection Eke

Information theory defines its index in terms of the likelihood of being able to predict the next symbol in a sequence. Counterintuitively, the highest information density appears where a string is entirely random. Given the letters “ajhhjnyv … ,” the next character could be any of the twenty-six options available on a standard keyboard. By…
The Future Has Poetry: “Tuesdays”‘ by R.C. Blenis

The boot descends. The wet thudof sole on skin, the small suckof leather peeling from flesh;the metronome of Mondays.Air squeezed sideways through a mouththat used to make music. The wheeze,the wet whistle, the catch between blows,pressure pressing into softness, the bodybeaten to a beat, a blood-beat drumming downto this dumb thud, this pulp, this pulse.This.…
Side A Prose Poem: “700 Watts” by Tessa C. Berman

700 Watts There’s something tragically beautiful about New York at night, when the cherries of cashiers’ cigarettes look like stars and the people move like livewire ragdolls around the cart corral I scuffed the side of my Soul on. It left no lasting mark, so I never planned to tell you. They changed the signs…
Poetry Review: Jen Schneider Reads Naima Yael Tokunow’s Anthology Permanent Record

In Permanent Record: Poetics Towards the Archive, editor Naima Yael Tokunow queries convention and prompts ongoing conversation in and of the archival record as conventionally styled and fashioned. In the work’s Introduction, Tokunow asks, in part: “How do we reject, interpolate, and (re)create the archive and record? How do we feed our fragmented recordings to…
“Language Is the Todeslager of Being”: Notes on Louis Armand’s Golemgrad Pentalogy by David Vichnar

Introduction: Necromodernism and the City of the Dead Necromodernism names the condition of literature after the death of its modernist and postmodernist projects. If modernism imagined the text as a monument to cultural renewal, and postmodernism played among its ruins with irony and bricolage, necromodernism arises when both gestures have collapsed. Literature no longer renews…
“Disclosure of the Divine Through the Self”: Edward J. Matthews Reads Spyridon St. Kogkas’ Avant-Garde Poetry Collection Hermeslang

At the dawn of the 21st century, language is no longer a purely semantic enterprise, that is, an assemblage of words, phrases, and sentences that convey ideas, concepts, and emotions. Granted, language may at times be polysemic, ironic, or ambiguous, which are qualities that have often been exploited in traditional forms of poetry. Today, language…
Fiction Review: Isabelle Zhu Reads Ann Cavlovic’s Novel Count on Me

On the topic of workplace harassment, one of my former colleagues once made the remark, “You should be able to advocate for yourself, since you’re mature.” For him, the capacity to believe that one’s version of reality is legitimate and ought to be fought for is a necessary condition of maturity. He implied that there…
Three Poems of Bad Survivalism: Sebastian Hunter

The Vintner I saw a lot of miracles on my descent to the gardenInnumerable rodents in crotches of carmine redstained with halos and television antennaeStand close enough and you can pick up messages for the unemployed,calls from one desolate sibling to anotherAt the base of the alder lazes the young vintner,preoccupied with “filtration” and what…
Poetry Review: Matt Betts Reads Samiya Bashir’s Collection I Hope This Helps

It’s hard not to be floored by I Hope This Helps by Samiya Bashir. The pieces in this collection come at us from unexpected directions and sneak up in stealth mode. The first piece “The Dressmaker” shows up, unannounced to let us know this isn’t going to go the way we expect it to. It…