Author: Heavy Feather

John-Michael Bloomquist: Three Father Nescio Poems from The Future

Father Nescio and the Ark of the Future The lift was a mile-long throat up to the scorched surface of the Earth. The phlegm-yellow sky hacked thunder and spat lightning around the Ark— a shimmering peanut of mercury larger than the New York skyline sitting in the vaporized seabed— a coral graveyard bleached like an albino…
Shannon Wolf on Refuse to be Done, a craft book by Matt Bell

In perhaps the craft book to end all other craft books, Matt Bell implores us to take ownership of our writing, to stop and take a second, third, hundredth look, and above all, to Refuse to Be Done—at least until we’re actually genuinely done with a manuscript and ready to kick it from the nest.…
And If the Woods Carry You, the third poetry collection by Erin Rodoni, reviewed by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

Erin Rodoni’s And If the Woods Carry You enthralls from the start and maintains the intensity of its revelations throughout. These are poems for a world whose woods are on fire, a significant contribution to the literature grappling with our looming climate catastrophe. Rodoni’s particular genius is her powerful use of European fairy tale tropes…
Side A Fiction: “To See the Moon” by Marlene Olin

To See the Moon What she hates most are the lights. There’s no dawn. No dusk. No silver sliver falling through the slats. Instead a light as bright as a photographer’s flash burns day and night. She’s almost sleeping. She would die for some blessed sleep. Instead she hears the squeak squeak squeak of a…
Haunted Passages: “Ghost of Girl,” a short story by Morghen Tidd

The house is beautiful they say but bathtub flows over water spilling in drops then steady stream swallowing the all of the floor around the claw feet. candle light flickers night drawing down through the open window blows crisp breeze in the room. listen carefully crowing of a bird mixes into wind a haunting howl.…
“The Land of All Time”: William Lessard Interviews Clark Coolidge + Six Exclusive Poems

For six decades, Clark Coolidge has been presenting language awash in information, with jarring and frequently hilarious syntax. Although frequently associated the Language School and the New York School, his work reflects his life-long dedication to jazz drumming and an improvisational poetics that takes in the entire world. In the following interview, Coolidge talks about…
Where the Sky Meets the Ocean and the Air Tastes Like Metal and the Birds Don’t Make a Sound, a novel by Mike Kleine & Dan Hoy, reviewed by Jace Brittain

It begins with a body. Like a lot of the books and movies of the detective noir genre, we know there is a woman’s body and not much else: Michael says, I hate that she’s dead. Daniel says, I know. Where the Sky Meets the Ocean and the Air Tastes Like Metal and the Birds…
Shannon Wolf on The Other Ones, a novel by Dave Housley

In Dave Housley’s newest offering from Alan Squire Publishing, a multitude of characters reckon with complacency as The Other Ones: coworkers left behind after failing to play in the lottery and watching their undeserving colleagues win big. Moving from the very concrete—the doldrums of office politics—to the abstract, strange, and disturbing—the wandering spirit of a…
“girls against god,” an ekphrastic poem by sterling-elizabeth arcadia

after annihilation (2018) remember how you cheated on heavenstared that alligator-angel in its eye & shot it dead? how your vertebrae surged with joyshimmered against the skin of your spine. he left you between dark walls& corrupting light—heaven-sent heaven gone to be in the south. with the silent wateramong those crystal trees. & when your…