Author: Heavy Feather
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Master of Rods and Strings, Jason Marc Harris’ debut novella, reviewed by Maxwell Malone
“The life of puppets […] is the dance of the fingers. Puppeteers of old—they say—would connect wires from their veins, feeding lifeblood to puppets to entice the spirits of the earth to enter them. Today, we do this with strings. You move, like so, and he moves. A thing is dead until it moves. You…
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Side A: “the cinder path,” a poem by Zach Savich
the cinder path harder to writemyself a noteon the back of the eulogythan the eulogyit takes a long timeto tune and longerto trust sometimesthe captions say“[gentle minor melody]”sometimes “[windactivates the motionalarm]” the fantasyat thirty-nineis a hamburger inthe parking lot by the squatlighthouse scrap beachif you touch me herebelow the throatit smells of rainthere isn’t roomon…
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How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children, a poetry collection by Quincy Scott Jones, reviewed by teri elam
How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children, Quincy Scott Jones’ poetry collection, crawls into the bloodstream, lays in wait, inching up the heat. His is an in-your-face look at race and culture, as much eulogy as history lesson, as much elegy as admonition. Jones, incinerator and extinguisher, understands the assignment he has given, coaxing…
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“Black. Star. Pieces.”: Side A Poetry by Matthew Cooperman
Black. Star. Pieces. —for Rosmarie Waldrop 1 The gathering of parts to their parts, will there be gathering of parts? Time, in a word, reading. As in, where did the song begin? Go on. Singing the terrible truth of the world, a griot through an open window. Something happened on the day he died, I…
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“Turning the Historical Romance Novel on Its Head”: Laurie Marshall on Leah Angstman’s Out Front the Following Sea
When an historical novel is done well it works details of setting and historical context into the story so deftly that we don’t realize we are being educated. Historical novels done poorly can quickly become exposition-heavy slogs that would be well suited for kindling in a remote cottage on the Scottish moors. It is my…
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Reunion of the Good Weather Suicide Cult, a debut novel by poet Kyle McCord, reviewed by Vincent James Perrone
Membership Where are you? On your evening off, your quiet morning, in the brief moments between longer moments of work and sleep and material responsibilities? If you are a member of the mostly secularized modern world, you’re likely looking for salves against alienation. Personal passions, pleasures, numbness, or revelry. If you’re a bit more well-balanced…
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“Whispering Dominium”: Witness and Want in Corey Van Landingham’s Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens
Lately, I have been searching for acknowledgment. I have been studying the genesis of Western universalisms, identifying the need to push back against the disembodied voice of knowledge decided upon by Western European and North American countries, by men who declared their own godlike authority, and their way of seeing and doing, as representative of…
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The Future: “In Another Lifetime,” from a crown of sonnets by Tomas Nieto
In a basement in what was known as Seattle, a watchmakersolders a metal wing onto a robot bird, springing it to lifewith the weight of gear as engine—motion as ignition. Thisis the closest thing to impulse without nerve, thrill, or grief.In another lifetime, fortune tellers read love linesthrough circuits and wires, speaking wonders from matrix,destiny…
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Four Poems by Joel Anthony Harris
Prince Varmint Stops a Viking Siege I’ll never forget the Bastille Day, how it stormed the countrytown like a kettle of vultures. Yeomen toiled in fallow fields hacking the soil with their harrows.From the north hailed a drab dragonship that fiddled the still moat.There he was the wretched sprite, the scoundrel: Sam the Terrible!His eyes were…
Heavy Feather Review 