Author: Heavy Feather

New Haunted Passages Short Fiction: “Sleepwalking Too Close to the Fire” by Danila Botha

I stood on the ship’s balcony, my head hanging over the railing, thick clusters of orange vomit merging with the darkening sea like Postmodern art. Agreeing to this was like stepping into a floating dream that mixed toxic positivity with aggressive self improvement through gurus and pickleball, astrology, and Pilates. I could hear the judgement…
New Side A Poetry: “to begin and end in the garden, slapping mosquitoes, reading her book” by Barbara Tomash

to begin and end in the garden, slapping mosquitoes, reading her book White lily, red lily, azalea, camellia, wisteria, salvia, grape arbor, rose. She checks anxiously on each plant, notes who is dead or barely surviving, who is furiously blossoming and shooting up green for reasons she can’t fathom— what if garden is a bed…
James Pate: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

Messiah of Evil (1973) We sit in the sun and wait. We sleep. And we dream. Each of us dying slowly in the prison of our minds. —Arletty, Messiah of Evil I’ve often thought of the human head as a meat radio. And cat heads too. And those of small, quivering birds flying too close…
Poetry for Side A: “Sophie” by Sherice Kong

Sophie We sit and wait fora picture that is taking its time to load. Our whole summershed like blood. The air was silked with cicadas and all the almost adults weretrembling in the hands to become someone important. I thought of how I could take my new licenseand drive straight across my life’s small, shiny…
Writing from the Future: “The Lemon Game” by Brittany Redd

You are a regular person just trying to survive in a world where life only ever gives you lemons. Sometimes, you get a lot of lemons; sometimes only a few. It is up to you to decide what you do with them. You can make lemonade. You can make something else if you want. Whatever you try to…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Jesi Bender’s New Novel Child of Light

“All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s probably safe to presume that anyone reading this site with any regularity knows this line by heart. As the first of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, it sits comfortably close to the top of the ranks for most famous first lines in…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “Galaxy” by Diane Zinna

My mom once told me, “You’re not pretty—you know that, right?” When I asked her through stinging tears why she would say that, she said, “Well, you have a horse face.” I was twelve. She also taught me the names of all the constellations. On the nights my stepfather filled the house with liquor and…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages: Emma Galloway Stephens

The Devil Beats His Wife When the devil beats his wife,rain and sunshine fall together. Hell’s housewife knows her husband’s daysare few—the rain falls rain on sun on rain. The devil’s a mobster, a debt collector—his wife waxes hell’s nine floors, washes its sooty windows.It’s a house of slamming doors. But slowly she learns not…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “A Plague of Grackles” by Adam Camiolo

It’ll happen slowly at first. He’ll come home a little early, make the turn onto their block, and he’ll see her, his wife, standing on the grass, barefoot, back turned towards the street, staring at the tree full of chirping birds. He may get out of his car, point to one and say, “honey, look…