Author: Heavy Feather

“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…
“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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
Flavor Town USA: Excerpts from ROSE MASK, service conversations by Jared Joseph

Rose Mask is a series of transcriptions of conversations between myself and the customers I served at a cocktail lounge and restaurant in Santa Cruz, CA, during 3 months of masked service due to the pandemic. The work is further framed as an impossible-to-stage work of theater, one that unfortunately plays itself out constantly in…
From “devours itself”: a mixed media collaboration for The Future by Alexandra Mattraw & Adam Thorman

*Ed.’s Note: click on image to view larger size. The Image Devours Itself 1 Adam Thorman If only my mouth it is that I will turn, seaward. Glow the apple in your phone we stand cliffside. Click pictures : Blue lace borders what isn’t. Cyclone, chain, center beach caving. Unseen I in the dream you…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Romana Iorga

Fairy Tale After James Schuyler I heard a rooster crow three times this morning.What does it mean, whom have I betrayed?Each day I walk toward something with a shore,or else, with a clearing. Humans use treesto surround their emptiness, their viscous needfor each other. I think I may still be a human.In the forest, no…