Author: Heavy Feather
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Flash Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Preserved From Decay and Endued with Immortality” by Andy Spain
We buried Uncle Charles way out back, beyond the orchard, a good two acres from the property line. We picked his bones clean and criss-crossed them end over end in a log cabin of sorts, like building a campfire. The leftover scraps of flesh and sinewy bits we burned in the center, praying that his…
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Two Poems from The Future: Oak Morse
DaBaby, the 49th President Lime Lamborghinis for college grads Diamond grillz for senior citizens Extra! Extra! Read all about it A Nigga in da House, No Cap Strippers hanging from the chandelier Pool with ocean water from Bahamas Slogan: Make jokes. No stress. Love. Live Life. Breaking…
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Robert Scotellaro: “A Sky Full of Crickets,” flash fiction triptych for Bad Survivalist
Hatching They are strapped in their upside-down car for hours before the firemen, slicing through metal, free them. The deer comes out of nowhere and when Clyde swerves the car flips. The airbags release, with a moments harsh embrace, then deflate. When Arleen says: “Fuck!” in a tone familiar to him he is finally able to…
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Death and So Forth, scintillating short fictions told and retold by Gordon Lish, reviewed by Nathan Blake
“A woman leaves town on business, phones her husband when the plane touches down. ‘How’s the cat?’ she asks. ‘The cat,’ her husband says, ‘is dead.’ ‘You can’t break bad news like that!’ the woman says. ‘Lead with something like, “The cat’s on the roof and I can’t get him down.” Then ease into the…
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Trimming England, a satirical almanac of terror by M.J. Nicholls, reviewed by Nora E. Webb
Trimming England, M.J. Nicholls’ latest work of satire, is a brilliant piece of character work. Not so much plot-based, the novel centers around one idea: “In 2021, British Prime Minister Frank Oakface elected to rid each English county of its most irritating citizen.” Those voted out by their community members receive sentences of varying lengths…
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“An Examination of My Mother’s Life through the Poetry of Nehassaiu deGannes”: Music for Exile Reviewed by Byron Armstrong
Read aloud, Nehassaiu deGannes’ new book of poetry, Music for Exile, might sound like my grandmother crooning lullabies to the grandchild his mother left behind in Jamaica, or the tears his mother shed over long-distance phone calls, always ending with the same gut-wrenching question. “When are you coming home?” My mother’s name is Gloria, which…
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The Future: “Wellness in the Workplace: A Professional Development Series,” fiction by Dolan Morgan
Series Overview How can the organization best build capacity and develop tools to avoid burnout and respond with confidence to a variety of contemporary professional circumstances, especially repeated on-the-job stabbings? This four-part series of weekly 90-minute professional development sessions will answer this question and more. Together, we will introduce numerous instructive scenarios, explore and rehearse…
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“Driving Through Geneva” a poem for Flavor Town USA by Avery Gregurich
for Wallace Ferguson Driving through Geneva is not a peaceful practice, holds nopractical mayhem beyond a Cracker Barrel, all lit up in rockingchair relief. When I finally got to Spoon River, it was all out of itsbanks, wandering unforgiven inside of Illinois, and when I got tothe cemetery, the caretaker was smoking, small, and petting…
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Edward M. Cohen’s Before Stonewall, an Awst Press novel selected by T Kira Madden, reviewed by Stephanie Bohland
A life in the closet, a life before Stonewall, was an act of performativity—a daily exercise in trying to simultaneously resist, and exist within, heteronormative expectations. Edward M. Cohen’s Before Stonewall is a collection of vignettes from a world before the gay liberation movement and the fourteen stories within his book, all brought together through…
Heavy Feather Review 