Author: Heavy Feather

Megan Merchant & Luke Johnson Lyric Epistolary Collaboration for Side A

What do we do when the black hole comes,—to L my son asks before the hours lighten. I know so much of this lifeis unreal, but yesterday I cut my lip and flooded my mouth with blood. I read about parents that chew food then mama-birdit into their babies’ mouths so they won’t choke. Haven’t…
New Flavor Town USA Fiction by Tyler Dillow: “Cherry Rum Flavor”

Deep red cherries in a bowl—I pit them, half them, soak them in rum. These are for later. Small treats take time. Even if only a little. When I make this, I think of countries stuck. Held in time. Always remembered for what they were and this is fine. Pour the cherry-infused rum over a…
Everything Is Totally Fine, a fiction collection by Zac Smith, reviewed by Michael G. Barilleaux

Everything Is Totally Fine by Zac Smith is a short fiction experience like few others in independent literature. What’s perhaps most engaging about Smith’s collection is not just that it proves its anxiety ridden title to be entirely ironic, but rather that it gives us a chance to reflect on the reality of this irony while…
“There Was Always Something More I Had to Know”: Marcus Pactor Interviews Gabriel Blackwell

Gabriel Blackwell never repeats himself. Each of his seven books offers a distinct approach to fiction, bending forms and genres to find new angles from which to capture the dark absurdities of modern American life. His new novel, Doom Town, is the confession of a man who has no faith in the power of confessions…
Exclusive Excerpt from And Yet, a book-length speculative essay by Jeff Alessandrelli

An innovative work of speculative fiction, Jeff Alessandrelli’s And Yet interrogates contemporary shyness, selfhood and sexual mores, drawing out the particulars of each through personal history, cultural commentary and the author’s own restless imagination. And Yet builds off the work of authors as disparate as Michel Leiris, Marguerite Duras and Kobo Abe, while quoting from and alluding to texts…
“Genre and Selfhood and Speculation, Endless”: Jeff Alessandrelli on writing And Yet

I recently published a book that, like thousands of books, is nebulous vis-à-vis genre. And Yet is a book-length fictional essay. It’s a long prose poem. It’s an experimental novel. It’s a commonplace book with a wavy, fragmented narrative. It’s a work of eclectic literary collage. It’s autofiction. It’s nonfiction that’s more informed by the…
“Trudging Through the Universe / As A Gigantic Lonely Eyeball”: An Interview with Gion Davis by Jeremy Boyd

Gion Davis’ debut poetry collection Too Much, forthcoming September this year, won the 2021 Ghost Peach Press Prize selected by Chen Chen and has been dubbed “wild and disrespectful” by Eileen Myles. In Too Much, Davis examines the self as a “gigantic lonely eyeball” wandering through scenes of abundance and hardship, creating a self-reliant and…
“letters that linger,” a poem by Jen Schneider

of the moments.memories.meanderings a. the sound of silenceb. the taste of quietc. the feeling of safetyd. the color of warmthe. the flavor of peace that could have pressed, stamped, stomped, even tattooed themselves in inks (blue.black.red) & palettes (pink.yellow.green) on concealed palms, at the midnight hour, of rays of sun / grains of sand /…
Haunted Passages: “Rooftops,” a new short story by Michael Cole

Just after 9:30 in the morning on a Wednesday in June, the creature tore down Michigan Avenue, upending taxi cabs, snagging awnings from storefronts, its talons leaving three-foot gashes in the asphalt. A few minutes later, the emergency sirens began to sound. In that time, the beast had emerged from Lake Michigan, traveled alongside the…