Author: Heavy Feather

S.R. Ponaka: “Just a Letter in the Mailbox,” a flash fiction for Side A

Just a Letter in the Mailbox My niece wants me to write a love letter to her father. They are visiting from New York, and all the rooms have been taken over by suitcases, so I’ve set up my laptop on the kitchen table, where I’m finishing up some urgent work emails before I can…
Six Poems by milagro moreno

Forgery in a Red DressAfter Safia Elhillo i forge a dark purple down the curve of my lip a river my tongue crosses a lisp that bobs for breath i forge a blue wing above the fat of my eyes a checkpoint i cross blind i want to believe if i forge a blade down…
This Is Symbiosis, a video performance for the 2021 Friends in Letters Memorial Fellowship

This Is Symbiosis is a deeply personal project they undertook to reflect on—and celebrate—their evolving friendship over time, through slice-of-life vignettes written by Brenna and accompanying illustrations designed by Ansel. The video incorporates a soundtrack for the piece, with keyboard accompaniment composed and performed by Brenna and audio recordings integrated by Ansel. In biology, the…
“Numbering, Headings, Weird Animal Facts”: Gay Degani Interviews Lynn Mundell, author of Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us

Lynn Mundell’s writing has been published in literary journals including Tin House, The Sun, Booth, and Five Points, and in the W. W. Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction. Her work has placed in the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions, short and long listed between 2017 and 2020, and won the 2019 Lascaux…
Terri Drake: Five Poems

Legend She offered her bodyas the world’s terrain.The smooth skin and the scars. She closed the curtainsand put a finger to her lips. She baked breadso we wouldn’t have to live on air. She made of the earth a giftand placed it at our feet. She sent out the dogs as sentinels.They came home to…
“The Woman of His Dreams,” a flash fiction by Kimm Brockett Stammen for Side A

The Woman of His Dreams He’ll meet her when he’s sleeping in the right bed. He’s planned out what to do: he will grab her. Gently, carefully, of course. He is not exactly sure how hard one has to grab to catch hold of a dream. But he will grab, nonetheless, and hold on, and…
“Maternal Monsters”: E.B. Schnepp Reviews Shapeshifting by Michelle Ross

Michelle Ross’ second collection, Shapeshifting, can only be described as a procession of horrifying transformations. More specifically, this is a series of horrifying female transformations that reveal with startling clarity the lack of agency that comes from existing in a feminine body, particularly when it comes to childbearing and its corresponding vulnerabilities. This transformation is demonstrated…
“A Disquieting Truth in Broken Hearts”: Robert Crooke Reviews Proof of Me & Other Stories by Erica Plouffe Lazure

In subtly connected tales of life in a small, Eastern North Carolina town, Erica Plouffe Lazure writes as if sharing yarns about her own extended family. She knows her people that well. And she has Eudora Welty’s sense of the way people and places determine each other’s fate. Thus, a naturalist’s field excursion in “Spawning…
“There Is No Answer to the Simplicity of Weather,” a collaborative poem by Leigh Chadwick & Mitchell Nobis

My dreams are nothing but a wall of owls. I wake up all eyes and twisted thumbs. The birds are back in pre-dawn spring. I’m stuck in an alarm clock of sweetness and tweets as the river pushes heavy with dead winter and trash. Benches are free unless you’re poor. I think about church, but…