Author: Heavy Feather

Bad Survivalist: Tam Nguyen’s attempted poem “2020’s Impressions”

Halfway through the year of 2020 1 About the flood season in 1978: My father’s boat was traveling to the drylands in the far South to collect some edible grass for the starving cows at home. The river was narrow enough for the melaleuca arms to remind him of guerrillas’ sneaky talks and gunfire. It…
“The Storytellers,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction by Kaj Tanaka

The disembodied hands were still a long way off. I mean, we could hear them down the hallway, kind of shambling their way toward us, but it was a long hallway and they were very bad at shambling. Like at one point, we heard them come up against a wall and then shuffle quietly in…
Bad Survivalist: “Beaver Dams and the Final Beaver Dam,” a flash fiction by Kaj Tanaka

We went down to the river yesterday to watch our beaver do his business. We have a beaver of our own, we said in wonder, here on our own land, just a little walk from our own house. We used to want things, I distinctly remembered we used to want things, but I could hardly remember…
Danny Caine: Three Flavortown Poems from Vol. 9

Last Will & Testament When I die bury me at Randall Park Mallbeside the pebbled fountain where coiny wateronce bubbled, by the stage where Tiffany sneakersonce danced and twirled. For the service set out rowsof Brookstone massage chairs so the whir of the Shiatsuhums as my Auntie Anne delivers a prayer through saltytears. Let her…
Short Story: “Bombing from Above” by Alex Kudera

In Xi’an, China, I had the runs. It had gone on for two days, and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop going. In the middle of the night, I’d dash to our apartment’s American-style toilet bowl where it would pour out like a Biblical flood. On a stifling bus—one sardine among many—the urge would…
“Whittier Cafe”: Wednesday Work Day Interview by Hillary Leftwich

Wednesday Work Day is a series started by editor Hillary Leftwich to showcase and support creatives who offer services, both in-person or online, and are impacted by the pandemic and the shutdowns both statewide as well as in other countries. The series will showcase one business or individual that is still able to provide a…
“Last Call,” a Haunted Passages short story by Cassandra Clarke

“The Restaurant of Obscure Sorrows isn’t the best place to work,” I told Alice, “but at least there’s no surprise disappointments … except, when it’s the special.” “Surprise disappointment,” Alice said, one finger raised in the air like she was a game-show contestant, “is sprinkled with sage, the sweat of the hopeful, and sauteed in…
Laura Eppinger Responds to Instances of Head-Switching, a short story collection by Teresa Milbrodt

The short stories in Instances of Head-Switching by Teresa Milbrodt report back from other worlds in sharp prose that is evocative but never flowery. Milbrodt fuses fairytale or mythological elements with the mundanities of adulthood, but there’s a lot more going on in every story. Strange settings are the background for characters to contend with…
Louis Zieja: Three Ekphrastic Monster Movie Noises for Haunted Passages

Them Ants (’54)“The sounds the giant ants emit in the film were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed in with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker.” —Them! (1954 Film) Wikipedia It’s a sound reminiscent of rot, of decay, of hunger,the realization that we are just caloriesfor an unknowable colony.…