Author: Heavy Feather

Bad Survivalist: Four Falling Sonnets by Eugene Ostashevsky

VI. Having children is exploitative. Children may become more than children. Those who have more children before the war, may have fewer after the war. Let us chide both children and the having of children. Having children is expletive. Children may cause lasting damage. To themselves, to everyone around them. They are just not safe.…
Fiction Review: Ria Dhull Reads duncan b. barlow’s Story Collection Awry

There’s a wolf on the cover of duncan b. barlow’s Awry, stylized in red and black, a signpost that seems to signal a collection of nightmarish short stories, some, presumably, centered on the image of the wolf, all, presumably, dark and bloody. This cover is a misdirection of sorts. There are animals scattered through Awry,…
Poetry Review: Casper Orr Reads Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Collection Girlhood x A Haunting

The past is haunting. It’s a common turn of phrase, but it still holds incredible weight. Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Girlhood x A Haunting examines this idea of past trauma being an oppressive, haunting force through an exploration of her childhood. Through a spectral retelling of her childhood experience with abuse, sexual assault, and neglect, Bergamino…
Bad Survivalist: Two Poems by Armando Jaramillo Garcia

Metamorphosis With the window open, the room comes to life with a variety of sounds, the street, just outside, I believe is a ventriloquist, making me think all its quarrels and serenades are just behind me. The sun, now riding under the earth, has never set, it just sits there, not thinking but giving off…
Book Review: Matt Martinson Reads Stéphane Mallarmé’s Long Poem A Roll of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance

My introduction to Stéphane Mallarmé was unique. My college courses that touched on literary Modernism never mentioned him. Nor did my theory courses—despite his looming, spectral influence of Derrida and De Man—ever even say Mallarmé’s name. And what’s more, when I finally did “discover” Monsieur Mallarmé, it was not via his most famous work, A Roll…
Side A Fiction by Jon Doughboy: “Your Mother Is on Her Way”

My mother’s lawyer called me this morning which came as a surprise because I didn’t know my mother had a lawyer or would have a need for a lawyer or even knew any lawyers. As a matter of fact it wasn’t the lawyer, a Mr. Defiore, Esq., who called but his secretary, introducing herself as…
New Side A Poetry: “Called Up / 2025 USA” by Jonathan Memmert

Called Up / 2025 USA We live in a place called what’s the differenceWe swim in an ocean called what’s to know We have something to say called who caresWe fall in love to a song called who remembers We wake to each morning called rewindWe eat meals each day called handouts We go to…
Fiction Review: Emily Webber Reads Josh Denslow’s Sophomore Collection Magic Can’t Save Us

What surprised me most about reading Josh Denslow’s new short story collection, Magic Can’t Save Us: Eighteen Tales of Likely Failure, is that while I loved encountering all the magical creatures, the actual humans are the most compelling parts of these stories. Every story, laced with humor and sarcasm, calls out how easy it is…
New Poetry: “Inventory” by Em Townsend

The law of conservation states that energy in an isolated system will remain constant over time It is day 2 of post-graduate reality: alreadyyou are lonely Your hair is choppy around your forehead from where you trimmed it yourself in a moment of desperation, wanting to feel like you had control over something, wanting to…