Author: Heavy Feather

  • “Promise Me Home”: Tiffany Troy in Conversation with Naoko Fujimoto

    “Promise Me Home”: Tiffany Troy in Conversation with Naoko Fujimoto

    Naoko Fujimoto was born and raised in Nagoya, Japan. She is the author of Where I Was Born (Willow Publishing, 2019) and three chapbooks: Mother Said, I Want Your Pain (Backbone Press, 2018), Silver Seasons of Heartache (Glass Lyre Press 2017) and Home, No Home (Educe Press 2016). She is an associate and outreach translation…

  • Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by Emily Pinkerton

    Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by Emily Pinkerton

    Go Like This Write in front of mirrors. Talk to yourselfin the bathroom. Spend late nights alone.Wake early, follow the sun. Tread carefully.Forgive with a watchful eye and an ear to the ground. Emergency Control in case I emergency. I handleas indicated. I open. Door turnsand I emergency. I plan. Responseincoming. In case I need.…

  • “This Sultry Thing Called Home,” a Bad Survivalist Poem by Dhwanee Goyal

    “This Sultry Thing Called Home,” a Bad Survivalist Poem by Dhwanee Goyal

    Loosely after Katia Krafft, a French volcanologist. Also somewhat inspired by John Ashbery. There were no landscapes where I lived, only water, its animals. Still, my father used to come home with fire burning the ends of his moustache. You know the story of birth: how woman meets woman, shrieks for every tragedy that could…

  • “Reacting to Crisis”: Tania Pabón Acosta on Margaret Emma Brandl’s Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies)

    “Reacting to Crisis”: Tania Pabón Acosta on Margaret Emma Brandl’s Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies)

    Margaret Emma Brandl’s new novella, Tuscaloosa (Or, In April, Harpies) (released this July as an eBook), tracks two sisters on their search for each other during the aftermath of a tornado that has ripped through Tuscaloosa. The book operates on two levels, both personified in sisters Kennedy and Esther. Not only do we witness the…

  • As Breaks the Wave Upon the Sea, a short story collection by Robert Wallace, reviewed by Maria Judnick

    As Breaks the Wave Upon the Sea, a short story collection by Robert Wallace, reviewed by Maria Judnick

    For thirteen summers, I rose early every morning for swim practice. I relished watching the sun rise as I did my laps, listening to the last early birdsong as the neighborhood stirred awake, pacing myself by the slow, steady wake of the swimmer in front of me as my mind wandered, pondering the big questions…

  • “Finding Fruits in My Palms”: A Review of Katie Farris’ A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving by Tiffany Troy

    “Finding Fruits in My Palms”: A Review of Katie Farris’ A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving by Tiffany Troy

    Katie Farris’ chapbook, A Net to Catch My Body in Its Weaving, is more than a chapbook of haunting; it returns us to that distinctly humanist “point of wonder” of what separates human beings from animals. The Oedipean riddle by the Sphinx and Pico della Mirandola’s famous speech all point to humans as the two-legged…

  • “Response as Strategy”: A Review of Claudia Rankine’s Just Us by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

    “Response as Strategy”: A Review of Claudia Rankine’s Just Us by Ben Lewellyn-Taylor

    Around the time that Donald Trump became a serious presidential candidate, many Americans in the U.S. took an active interest in the prospect of conversation. Some believed in talking to white people about not voting for him, while others believed in not talking to white people already determined to vote for him. Each position seemed…

  • Side A: “Taxonomy of Amnesia,” a poem by Tam Nguyen

    Side A: “Taxonomy of Amnesia,” a poem by Tam Nguyen

    Taxonomy of Amnesia I swear I’d trade my body to remember and instantly regret it. Ma and Ba—children of sweat-glazed faces, too-short ribs. Their spines the bridges connecting no worlds. Am I your son at all?The answer a teethmark left on a just-ripened bomb. Anywhere on earth my body will be hijacked by explosions, even…

  • Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

    Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

    Fragments in Color 1 When a kid I kept running away from home to see if Mama still wanted me. Never far and always to the corrugated camp near Sunset. I drank chicory with Maggie and chalked pink flamingos on the concrete. Tall yellow legs, long feathers with curved necks turned right. Beaks dark as…