Author: Heavy Feather

“Trump or Wile E. Coyote?”: A Current Events Quiz by Tara Campbell

Choose A, B, or C for each of the numbered items below:A) Real or proposed border control measureB) Scheme to capture Road RunnerC) Both 1) Firearms2) Cement3) Dogs4) Mirrors5) Gas (sleeping/tear)6) Electric spikes7) Black paint8) Invisible paint9) Dropping anvils10) Cactus Costume11) Shooting legs12) Portable hole13) Exploding tennis balls14) Giant balloons15) Misleading instructions16) Steel plates17) Moat…
Bad Survivalist: Five Plane Crashes by Chance Dibben

The Disappeared The airliner is not at the bottom of the ocean. Nor is it blown to bits over a 1000-mile radius of uninhabited water. No one’s dead. Hostage situation perhaps, the airliner flown to a dark forest, stored for a ransom that never comes. Maybe the passengers are contented. Maybe they will reappear in…
Four Poems by Schyler Butler

If Forced to Join Maleatra Montanez know that he will sayyour legs burst wide like syrup pouredhis throat the drain what was he to dobut unload blame ontoyour blackstrap skinslaughter within youwhat little dignityremained, boy childof yours in the cornerforever tamed, anotherreceptacle of shame What the Devil Tells Me I wouldn’t blame your fatheror the…
Lee Patterson: Two Essay Poems for Bad Survivalist

an essay about funerals I want to set a car on fire, set guns on fire, set love on fire—grow skin so crimson we call it fire. I want to grow a more giving heart, set it on fire, watch what crumbles crumble. trumpets blare against the wall. a temple falls, a medicine cabinet cracks…
Avery Colt Is a Snake, a Thief, a Liar, a debut novel by Ron A. Austin, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Avery Colt is a kid who could use a break. In addition to the everyday struggles of adolescence, he’s caught in the webs of poverty, masculine expectation, and systemic racism that are keeping him, his family, and his community down. Set in North St. Louis, Ron A. Austin’s debut novel (winner of the Nilsen Prize)…
The Future Has Photography: “Men with Their Guns 2” by Margo Berdeshevsky

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Margo Berdeshevsky is the author of: BEFORE THE DROUGHT (Glass Lyre Press/2017). She is the winner of Fiction Collective Two’s American Book Review/Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize: “a ‘thrillingly cutting-edge’ book of sensual short-short stories with photographs by the author.” (Robert Olen Butler on Beautiful Soon Enough).
Fiction from The Future: “Rabid Dogs” by Jason Arment

Time before the alarms, when violence was only overseas, seemed disconnected from the now—silent countdown. Clark glanced at his watch. Only two minutes left. He wished things could go back to the way they were, when his only worries had been never amounting to anything and loneliness. But something had changed. Now every sixty minutes…
A Story from The Future by C.A. Schaefer: “To Whom Will You Seem Beautiful”

I am eighteen when I decide. I stand by the bed of the creek, watching the light on the surface of the water, when a man steps down beside me. He takes my face in his hands and turns it, side to side, as I might inspect a puppy or an antique, and then says,…
“The Butchers”: A Fiction Excerpt from The Future by Alana I. Capria

On Sundays, we butchered. It made us so happy, S— and me. We did not mind the blood or sound. We butchered what crouched and quivered, what was soft against a knife. S— and I butchered until our hands were wet. We prepared the butchering for a meal, for stews, steaks, and roasts. I carried…