Author: Heavy Feather

Animal Children, Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s surreal microfiction collection from Nomadic Press, reviewed by Tyler Dempsey

Note I Feverishly Add 12 Hours Before the Speech In front of Death and everyone, I bury the lede in the mirror: “What sort of book is this? Is it poetry? Fiction? Something else? So a good jumping off point might be to examine the idea of genre, starting with asking the class how they…
Fiction from The Future: “Old Faithful” by Nathan Dragon

He’d say if maybe he got a new one, he’d be able to get some work done. The desk chair was a pain in his ass. Couldn’t sit right and couldn’t work right. Always something, Rosie would say, whenever he complained. He just couldn’t get comfortable in the damn chair, no matter how he’d adjusted…
The Future: “Women with Runes,” a short story by Michelle Dove

Independence It is here—the celebration of our country’s birth—and the heat is a trillion or two trillion degrees. To stay cool, we wear our chamber suits and sit far enough from each other so the sweat doesn’t spread, only localizes within our individual suits and runs between our thighs where nobody sees. The musicians take…
The Future: Three Poems by Holly Day

Despite My Reservations Regarding the Apocalypse the dragon outside my bedroom window tells methat the end is coming soon, that it’s okay to get drunkfucked up, fuck around, because it’s all going to come crashing downso very soonthat there’s no reason to practice prudence or prudishness. it blinks its giganticblue-green eyes at me through the…
Four Poems from The Future by Jim Redmond

Aperture I don’t know why I had to start doubting GodI thinkit might have something to do with the governmentsomething about the redshiftI think many strange things I have not thoughtbeforemany small mothscovering my facethe lengthof their tongueslike what it mustfeel like to have skinsearching across methe life expectancyof so many lonely starsthat I don’t…
Fiction from The Future: “Dog Days” by Michael Chin

From back before all the dogs were gone, I remember Waffles. The first time Waffles stole a waffle from Dad’s plate (the reason we renamed him from Rover). Waffles barking from the far side of the front door when I keyed into the house. The way Waffles smelled when he was wet—moist and mildew-y in…
“Graphical Variations”: My Red Heaven by Lance Olsen, an historical experimental novel from Dzanc Books, reviewed by Daniel Green

In a career that now includes 14 novels and four collections of short fiction (as well as seven works of nonfiction), Lance Olsen has produced an admirable variety of experimental fictions, no one of which seems merely a repetition of any of the others. There are identifiable tendencies and gestures in his work, to be…
The Fabulous Dead, Andriana Minou’s un-historical flash fictions from KERNPUNKT Press, reviewed by Christina Ghent

The iconic and celebrated historical composers, astronauts, actresses, philosophers, and authors among a host of others are brought back to life within Andriana Minou’s short story collection, The Fabulous Dead. Their lives are deconstructed in an often humorous manner that forces us to consider the possibilities that history might not have gotten it exactly right.…
Imaginary Museums by Nicolette Polek, a very real story collection from Soft Skull Press, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

This slim collection of compact stories left me dumbfounded that we’re given the agency to run our own lives when it’s clear there are myriad ways we’re screwing them up. Disconnection, isolation, distraction, and desire are just a few of the ploys we dumb humans engage to safeguard against making connections that are too true,…