Author: Heavy Feather

Original Side A Poetry by Brenton Booth: “Whispers”

Whispers I gave away our old clothesdryer for free a few hoursearlier to a young happy couple.Carefully helping them load itinside their sleek new metallic grayvan. Remembering the day wefirst bought it. You delicatelystroking its clear unblemisheddoor like a newborn childin the light freshly renovatedbathroom of our just rentedseventh-floor city apartment.Feeling nothing but totaloptimism for…
Two Poems for Flavor Town USA: John Gallaher

Some Details We Missed On the Tour You open it, start. And leave it open, to return to. But the mood perhaps never strikes. Sorry, I was just thinking of the vacuum decay death of the universe again, that should’ve happened by now, and I guess I got a bit ahead of myself. Lavender is…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald Reads Jess Hagemann’s Documentarian Novel Mother-Eating

Back when I was growing up—a good, Christian boy in the suburban South—there were pretty much three cults that everyone knew by place or name: Waco, Jonestown, and Heaven’s Gate. That was the list. Sure, our parents would decry large-scale organizations like Scientology and Mormonism as cults, but (fair or not) that was largely denigratory,…
New Poem for Side A: “Migraciones: A Triptych” by Yvette Saenz

Migraciones: A Triptych Triptych I: ApologeticBandidos There is somethinginnocent about theapologetic bandido,that over-told story ofmachismo.It’s the desire to returnpeople to earlier forms,to nudge him gently with abroom into the pastBoy fooling his motherdiscovers she’d never lovehimthe way she lovedAmerica:without a mask. His mother is America. Allof it.How funny that this truthcan never be proven?Proof is…
Bad Survivalist Fiction: “Body Snatching in the 21st Century” by Mathew Serback

Show some goddamned patience. No one—not even a body snatcher—gets rich overnight. When no one attends the funeral, you might as well leave them to the worms. Anyone worth something draws a crowd—unless the will’s already been read and possessions divided up. The gold teeth aren’t worth it. You might find a silver ring or…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “I Ask Mom to Tell Me about Life Back on the Rancho” by Jose Hernandez Diaz

She tells me they had a hen house.I ask if only hens lived in the hen house?No, roosters and chicks, too, she says.She proceeds to patiently describe That sometimes coyotes would sneakInto the hen house, moving rocks, with their noses,Blocking doors to the hen houses. Sometimes, she says,Brazen banditos would rob the hen houses of eggs,…
Poetry Review: Zachary Kinsella Reads Flower Conroy’s Bestiary Zoodikers

In their fourth full-length collection, Zoodikers: A Bestiary, the former NEA and MacDowell fellow Flower Conroy dissects tangents of strangeness that perform diversions from the hegemonic toward a new order that is perverse, that is humble, that is shocking. The enigmatic pulse of Zoodikers (the term a 17th-century exclamation defined as “God’s hooks”) spotlights a…
Fiction Review: Anu Kandikuppa Reads Mike Powell’s Novel New Paltz, New Paltz

The cover of New Paltz, New Paltz by Mike Powell sets expectations: yellow and purple—color-wheel opposites; cheery and gloomy; a tear suspended on a cheek; a song—or maybe a cry—erupting from an open mouth. The novel covers a period in the life of the narrator, Ben, when he’s fallen in love with a girl from…
Side A List Poem by Tracy Royce: “Things That Remain Suspended (Handsfree) When Wedged Beneath My Breast”

Things That Remain Suspended (Handsfree) When Wedged Beneath My Breast my electric toothbrush, toothpaste tube, and floss my hair dryer, cord coiled at my feet three organic romaine hearts, nestled in their package one 375 mL can of wine, the kind you buy so you can pretend you’re not going to open a second can…