Author: Heavy Feather

Marcus Pactor on Brandi Homan’s New Novel Burn Fortune

Holden Caulfield still irritates me, though I have not read The Catcher in the Rye since before the century’s turn. Teenaged narrators made me crotchety when I was in my twenties. I have become much surlier since then. So maybe I am not the most naturally sympathetic reviewer of a coming-of-age novel like Brandi Homan’s…
Akusua A. Akoto: Three Poems

Mother’s Dance #1 Mother does notWant to dance aloneCome childShe’s trying to bringYou into the musicOf her tears Her mouth is bleedingIn the center of this prayer.There is no waterIn her danceAs she stumbles forHer father Her hands are achingAnd in her pleaFor salvationShe is naked As hands touch herShe knowsShe will be raped againUnder…
Jonathan Louis Duckworth: Three Wendigo Poems for Haunted Passages

Wendigo III Rasp of rawhide, knock of bone on hollow bone, clatter of loose broad teeth set in cervine jaw, jangle of beads of glass & obsidian & cowrie, sounds that fill your footprints like snowmelt. You know wendigo is following you. Dokeep walking. Do notlook back. Dorub your hands together—warmth will protect you. Do…
Alexa T. Dodd Reviews No Finis; Triangle Testimonies, 1911, a poetry chapbook by Deborah Woodard

Deborah Woodard’s newest chapbook, No Finis, is a striking reimagining of the infamous 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire trial. Her poems reify the experiences of the victims and, in doing so, shed a timely light on issues of labor injustice, women’s rights, and immigration. Woodard imaginatively excises lines from the trial transcript and arranges them…
Eric Aldrich on John Englehardt’s New Novel Bloomland

John Englehardt’s new novel, Bloomland, challenges readers to live and relive a mass shooting at a fictional southern university from three perspectives. Readers follow Eddie, an adjunct composition instructor who loses his wife in the shooting, Rose, a young woman attending the college but not in the library during the violence, and Eli, the shooter…
Micah Zevin: Two Poems from The Future

Personification: Extinction Chronicles Can we make more happen than burning to the groundand tears? Become a disappearing collection in the noble library ofnoble thoughts and concepts shelved. Have you ever said you’ve run out of yourself? The ego is a regal thing but has no crown. I am in a rush not to slip into…
An Essay from the Future: “What the Birds See” by Janice Lee

—for and with AH Bird 1: How might we envision a future that is not ours, but could be?Bird 2: What you are asking about is the rejection of linear time, because linearity is for the colonizer, in which there is only one kind of progress.Bird 1: And what kinds of progress do we have?Bird…
“The Light to Our Worship”: A Poem from The Future by Armando Jaramillo Garcia

Vertical farming is coming The rain will grow your hair back Friends will be a dime-a-dozen Real ones will still be scarce Floods will balloon the bodies of thoughts Only science may prick to disastrous results And from that they’ll gather the seeds For their machines which will sting to touch Kites will bishop the…
Leland Cheuk: “My SMS,” short fiction from The Future

I sent one of my SMSs (Social Media Selves) to my friend’s reading way out in Longway Meadow. I didn’t want to go personally (too far, not in the mood), and I figured enough of my friend’s friends (or their SMSs) would be in attendance that I wouldn’t be missed. The holographic selves are very…