Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Jesi Bender’s New Novel Child of Light

“All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s probably safe to presume that anyone reading this site with any regularity knows this line by heart. As the first of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, it sits comfortably close to the top of the ranks for most famous first lines in…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “Galaxy” by Diane Zinna

My mom once told me, “You’re not pretty—you know that, right?” When I asked her through stinging tears why she would say that, she said, “Well, you have a horse face.” I was twelve. She also taught me the names of all the constellations. On the nights my stepfather filled the house with liquor and…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages: Emma Galloway Stephens

The Devil Beats His Wife When the devil beats his wife,rain and sunshine fall together. Hell’s housewife knows her husband’s daysare few—the rain falls rain on sun on rain. The devil’s a mobster, a debt collector—his wife waxes hell’s nine floors, washes its sooty windows.It’s a house of slamming doors. But slowly she learns not…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “A Plague of Grackles” by Adam Camiolo

It’ll happen slowly at first. He’ll come home a little early, make the turn onto their block, and he’ll see her, his wife, standing on the grass, barefoot, back turned towards the street, staring at the tree full of chirping birds. He may get out of his car, point to one and say, “honey, look…
Side A Flash Fiction: “Side Jobs Wanted” by Mario Moussa

Side Jobs Wanted I’m looking for side jobs. If you need a pet sitter or a house sitter while you’re away. I’ll sit with your plants if they need company. I’ll talk to them if they like talking. Or a babysitter—you want to go away and have me sit and talk with your baby? Sounds…
Side A Poetry: “WHAT IF THE INSTAGRAM WELLNESS GIRLIES ARE RIGHT” by Anna Boughtwood

WHAT IF THE INSTAGRAM WELLNESS GIRLIES ARE RIGHT Follow her Follow her Luteal Phase Sweet Potato Brownie recipe and Pilates Princess Flat Abs Routine and raw milk truther vlogs andMake America Healthy Again™-approved coffee enema technique and Slavic Girl Glowing Skin Whole Foods Shopping List and hormone balancing journey andnon-toxic sugar-free glow up diary andmold detox…
Short Story for Side A: “Fragments of One or the Other” by Molly Andrea-Ryan

Fragments of One or the Other It’s Tuesday, which means it’s the day that I spend the afternoon with my niece. I watch her, that’s what her mother would say, although that sounds a little too punitive to me, makes her sound a little too puny, one or the other. Suggests a power imbalance which…
Fiction Review: Jason K. Friedman Reads Devin Jacobsen’s Story Collection The Summer We Ate Off the China

The academy has long been suspicious of literary language, considering the very concept of a privileged mode of expression privileged in other ways: elitist, exclusionary. These days fiction writers seem to agree. If they aren’t in fact autofiction, the stories you read in, yes, elite literary publications mostly try to sound as if they’re just…
New Poetry by Delaney S. Saul: “You’ve Never Even Heard of Main Character Syndrome”

It’s the first Father’s Day since my dad died and I’m working at the mall. It’s been ten years since my psychotic break. I’m still recovering, even after all this time. Something I’ll always remember is how he came from out of town to drive me to the hospital. I could never tell him how…