Author: Heavy Feather

Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Oranges” by Laurel Benjamin

A woman has taken a man into the kitchen, shows him the panstripped of its black coat—Taken years to form, she says, and grabs the unscented orange cleanser, like pickingthe tree, a globe ready to burst. She dreams the past, gurney ride down a hallway, and under the gas she’s breast-stroking in the pool with…
Side A Poem: “The Next Time I Talk to My Friends” by Peter Leight

The Next Time I Talk to My Friends I’m not leaving anything outNot putting anything awayThat I haven’t taken outAs part of the same projectWhen it’s dark insideWe’re sitting down together and turning on the lights quickly like William JamesIn order to see what the darkness looks likeThere are times when we lookAt the same…
Book Review: Anthony Borruso Reads Chris Campanioni’s Hybrid Text north by north/west

Despite its directional title, Chris Campanioni’s hybrid text north by north/west: (an attention to frequency) is a virtuosic linguistic collage that, more often than not, indulges in indirection and subversion. Taking inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, who was known for his narrative deception and generic subterfuge (even going so far as to kill off his leading…
Poetry from Flavor Town USA: “Death Is on the Menu” by Anthony Cappo

Morning groggy, anxiety spike, and stumble out the door. Café smells of coffee, French toast, and menace. Every morning death on the menu. Maybe not written— might be down-low house special— but always there. You can’t “86” death. Chills the forks and spoons lying on the table. It looks slimming, grins the maître d’. The…
Fiction Review: Asha Dore Reads Em J Parsley’s Novella You, from Below

In Em J Parsley’s You, from Below, the speaker climbs an Appalachian mountain to deliver an envelope after their holler town falls apart. The speaker is the only survivor. Along the way, they meet folks and gather their stories of “rapture and decay.” This slim novella punches lyrically through landslides and loss, punctuated by often…
Fiction Review: Tara Van De Mark Reads Diana Oropeza’s Debut Collection An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance

An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance by Diana Oropeza arrived by mail, slipped out of the envelope, through my hands, and onto the hallway floor. The size of a passport, it landed next to a banana peel and a pile of junk mail and I worried that this treasure would, like the subject it ponders, disappear. Instead, it…
New Music Essay: “How I Got into Free Improvisation” by Peter Valente

I remember as a teenager living in Fairview, NJ, and going down to the corner store and finding a cassette of Ornette Coleman’s Art of the Improvisors. I grew up listening to classical music and opera and I knew there was something about the sound of free jazz that I liked but it would be…
Fiction Review: Andrew Fort Reads Dustin M. Hoffman’s Collection Such a Good Man

Whose America is it? The subject of Dustin M. Hoffman’s collection Such a Good Man is, by sheer percentage, masculinity in Middle America. Represented here are good fathers, bad fathers, and in-between fathers. There are husbands who are trying hard and husbands who aren’t trying very much at all. There are laborers, house painters, framers,…
Bad Survivalist: Three Poems by David A. Kirschenbaum & Sean Cole

Colorado Naropa—1992, 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998 Naropa—1996 I missed you and now miss you. I mean, not now, because you are here. (I just touched you.) Of course you did. After all I’m newly 40. 15 years since pilgrimage to show Ginsberg four poems. July 4th picnic, him making graphite pizza from all my drivel.…