Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry by Jim Daniels: “Boo Boo”

Someone’s feelings were hurt. BadBoo Boo. Oops, Boo Boo. Some-one’s feelings. O I felt your feelings,wet smooshy feelings.Big Bang Theory of Hurtfeelings. Dealingswith feelings. Gel and a wetcomb. Band-aids and Cand-aids. Bloody sweet feelings.The Long and Shortof feelings. Errors-in-the-scorebook hurtfeelings. Wheeler-dealer feelings. O.Just O of hurt feelings.I am so O for yourhurt feelings. Can I…
“Ruidoso, Carrizozo, Ruidoso”: Short Fiction by Adrian Van Young

Billy Sue Dolan was from Ruidoso, one town in a hundred New Mexico towns. Except Ruidoso was in Lincoln County, the most violent part of that desolate state, where William McCarty or William H. Bonney or Billy the Kid, he would come to be known for the twenty-one men he’d reportedly slain, had seen ideal…
Knar Gavin: Two Poems

My Cooter, Your Us upon being expelledfrom the uterus& them brigade my neighbor cuts offall our hair and rollstowel around skull screams our uteruses have been pluckedout, outs me out thoughshe probablydoesn’t meanours—hers or mine—but thePlatonic Table Uterus, thatuterus, and i suppose i’m supposed tojust trust—to believe it’s there,and sometimes she she is uterustlingin the…
Haunted Passages: “Sticking the Cow,” a lyrical prose piece by Stina French

My mother called penises “tallywackers.” That’s a name meant to scare a girl off ‘em. I wonder if that word came to mind when she was eighteen, when her uncle raped her. I didn’t understand, as someone who had never been raped, how it can make a woman run from her body forever, force her…
“The Arm,” a short story for Haunted Passages by Henry Giardina

I made my choice, and I don’t have no regrets so far. That’s a lot better than some folks in town can say. It’s been about, oh, four years now since they took the arm. Actually took it, I mean. I made the choice for it to go much earlier—I guess I must have been…
“Serious Play”: Dana Diehl Interviews Carol Guess & Aimee Parkison

I was first introduced to Carol Guess’s collaborative work while I was editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and we published her story, “With Animal,” co-written with Kelly Magee. It was the first collaborative work I’d read and profoundly affected my understanding of authorship and the “rules” of fiction, eventually inspiring me to pursue my own…
Dear Brother Excerpts: A.M. O’Malley Poetry

Dear Brother Three babies came between us. They were all sucked away or withered on the vine. The summer you were born I had buds forming on my branches. I had touched tongues for extended periods of time with boys who thought I was fifteen or sixteen, boys with skateboards, boys with ripped collars, boys…
“What Has Become of Freedom?”: A Poem by Ace Boggess

—Bob Hicok, “To Find the New World” The trouble with freedom is being freenot to think about freedom or desire escapeto freedom. Easy spending too many hourswatching the same news on televisionwith nothing new about it to make it newsexcept in name. The machine god pulls its levers &an airplane disappears—sleight of a clockwork handas…
Fiction: “What Is Left” by Jen Michalski

You’re making good time. Keep this up, the splits will be amazing. There’s one guy ahead, a kid, really, who won’t even feel this tomorrow, the pain of achievement, his legs like spokes on a bicycle wheel, cycling, cycling, all legs and concave torso, a kid who hasn’t grown into form, into ache. You are…