Author: Heavy Feather

Side A Flash Fiction: “Olive Gabardine” by Kevin Grauke

Olive Gabardine Every night I’d go home and complain to my wife about him—how he could never count out the correct change, how I’d find him asleep in the bathroom and the breakroom and the janitor’s closet, how he always wore the same pair of pants with a hole in the crotch that was impossible…
“Endless Hallways”: Laura Paul Reviews George Wylesol’s 2120

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Called a printed “point and click escape game,” George Wylesol’s new comic, 2120, shows how the influence of interactivity continues to exert itself in narratives, even on the page. Taking its form as an analog video game in the style of Choose Your Own Adventure, the book…
“The Alienation of the Long Distance Stalker”: Laura Paul Reviews Ali Raz’s Alien

Ali Raz’s newest book, Alien, is a novella about a hunter on the lookout for extraterrestrials in a city facing consistent destruction. For a quick read, it is not without its sharp risks and thrilling angles. In our time of heightened brutality, when friction is omnipresent, Alien hits the unlikely sweet spot of engaging enough…
With Different Eyes, an illustrated prose collaboration by Paul Smart & Richard Kroehling

With Different Eyes is a heart-stabbing book collaboration by the writer Paul Smart and the artist Richard Kroehling. The subtitle calls it “A Covid Waltz in Words & Images,” which doesn’t tell you much about this remarkable little volume. The pages are slightly wider than they are tall, and the narrative unfolds in very brief…
The Last Dinosaurs of Portland, a prose chapbook by James R. Gapinski, reviewed by Shyanne Hamrick

The Last Dinosaurs of Portland may immerse us in Portland, Oregon, but do not be fooled: the collection of ten short stories doesn’t linger there, not really. Instead, it is a surreal version of Portland comprised entirely of bridges—those “rusted footbridges that spiral out of your bedroom window and meander toward your ex’s neighborhood” and…
“Leaver,” a poem by Audrey King

of glasseson airplanes; papersat home; socks at the baseof beds; of cell phonesupstairs; of voicemails: hi honey,where the hell are you; of planets and bodiesand families and wives. When it tookto your body, grabbed hold; anchored;plummeted; ultimately surrendered the morphineonto you, did you strike? I imaginea stunned crow; talons chainedclose on your chest. But I…
Disembodied, a book-length fragmented fiction by Christina Tudor-Sideri, reviewed by S. D. Stewart

In his fragmentary work The Step Not Beyond (State University of New York Press, 1992; translated by Lycette Nelson), Maurice Blanchot describes writing as “not destined to leave traces, but to erase, by traces, all traces, to disappear in the fragmentary space of writing more definitely than one disappears in the tomb.” This concept of…
Dave Fitzgerald on Interrogating the Abyss, collected works by Chris Kelso

What is the abyss? Several years back, I went hiking in the Catskills with my now-wife, my childhood best friend, and his then-girlfriend in search of some unmapped swimming hole cliffjumps we’d heard about. The first one we came to was quite high, and quite narrow—a slim, deep canyon enclosing a complexly tiered waterfall. There…
Side A Poetry Collaboration: “dear denver,” by Terence Degnan & Denver Butson

Dear New York, For reasons unwilling to be revealed// My father is no longer with you// Grief as a tree has warned me// that I have my weapons misordered// birds come and go// willows dry// fall into the creek// Grief doesn’t follow any of these// James was killed by a falling machine// Falling grief, grief…