Author: Heavy Feather

Side A Poetry: “Contrary” by Alina Zollfrank

We packed bottomless bags, sharpened ↑ stubby pencils, ticked none of the boxes, choiced □□□□multiplicity, essayed our thesis-loathing hearts out, regurgitated forgettable dates and wrong facts, and ran ○○○ circles around a track that put us in our ꜚ ꜚ ꜚ corners. We trusted suspiciously, argued respectfully, attended religiously except when we weren’t. We borrowed…
“The River Inside and Out”: Dave Karp on Matt Trease’s Poetry Collection The Outside

When I think about what it truly means to be an engaged writer, I think about writers who confront the world from some set of principles: Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, communist, or socialist, through an indigenous belief system or some other source of precepts and strictures. Matt Trease is just such an engaged writer,…
Nonfiction Review: McKenzie Watson-Fore Reads Gabriella D’Italia’s Debut Memoir Getting Dressed in the Dark

The crisis that catalyzes Gabriella D’Italia’s debut memoir, Getting Dressed in the Dark: An Artist’s Way Home, is a gruesome separation and divorce, when D’Italia learns that her partner of twenty-two years has been cheating on her with her much-younger coworker and friend. However, Getting Dressed in the Dark is much more than a divorce…
Poetry from the Future: “Makeup Revolution Highlighter in Supercharge Fever” by Georgia Slavec

Today in preparation for the apocalypseI memorize the labelof my favorite cosmetic highlighter.If I leave my room explodingsparkles, do not regard me. We in the darkare species: endless, like jazz, thoughtsthat will be told. Clear black bottlesof ink with the potential to beanything, or simply to definethe eyes, whose dramasrenew. I hear we’ve got twowarm…
Side A: Three Fictions by Andrew Bertaina

The Prayers of Strangers He pulled off at the gas station on the side of the road, gravel and rubber. At the pump, the attendant asked him if he wanted to confess anything. He’d forgotten that things were different in New Jersey, that the attendant walked right up to ask you if you wanted to…
“The Axis Rewinds”: Thomas B Revisits Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha von Dechend’s Mythic Essay Hamlet’s Mill in an Age of Fragmentation

I didn’t go looking for Hamlet’s Mill. It found me—during a season of psychic weather when everything in my life felt dislodged, the usual maps no longer worked. I had drifted from most of my routines, including reading. But this book, pulled from a dusty shelf by accident or fate, offered a different kind of…
Fiction for Bad Survivalists: “Butterfly Knife” by Joshua Wetjen

My dad waves the shiny blade in front of my face. “This is a real weapon,” he says, patting my fingers closed over the handle. My mom sighs and leaves to help Marnie make dinner in the kitchen. “What’s wrong?” Dad asks. Mom hates all weapons and violence. She hates how I’ve seen all the…
Fiction Review: Kevin McMahon Reads Alexis Von Konigslow’s Novel The Exclusion Zone

Chernobyl. The name itself conjures a range of emotions and images, and my own intrigue in this infamous disaster was more than sufficient to pique my interest in giving this particular title a read. There’s a fantastic German word for the overwhelming sense of unease that’s palpable throughout—unheimlich—literally, “unhomely,” or the exact opposite feeling of…
New Essay: “The Gospel of the Dumpster” by Joey Colby Bernert

Move-out day, April 2022. I had just graduated, just came out, and was sitting on everything the university left behind. The Photo This was me in April of 2022. A queer who had come to terms with their gender identity and sexuality. I had just finished my undergraduate degree in Women and Gender Studies. I was…