Author: Heavy Feather
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Meiko Ko on Gillian Cummings’ The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter
Shakespeare’s Ophelia is an evocative figure of suffering, of men’s betrayal of women, as especially expressed within court patriarchy. The famed play finds her crushed by the cruelty and self-interests of her father, her brother, Hamlet, and Hamlet’s mother. She could have fought. She did not. Circumstances and times preventing her, she could only choose…
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Shelf Life of Happiness, short stories by Virginia Pye, reviewed by Charles Duffie
In “Best Man,” the opening story from Virginia Pye’s new collection, Keith flies to Reno to attend Don’s wedding. Don is Keith’s best friend, as gay as Keith is straight, living with AIDS, and marrying a woman. That last fact confuses Keith, but soon all his expectations are unboxed: Don is near death, the wedding…
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“Nowhere to Go from Here”: Rick Henry Chats with Micah Perks
Micah Perks’ latest collection of threaded short stories, True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape, was published this past fall by Outpost19 to some critical acclaim. She grew up in the eastern Adirondacks and in Vermont, and has the relatively rare experiences of living on a commune in her early years, as well as…
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Museum of Stones, a novel by Lynn Lurie, reviewed by Christina Ghent
In the novel Museum of Stones, we follow an unnamed narrator through the journey of what motherhood is really like. And in her third work, Lynn Lurie masterfully depicts this chaotic, frightening, loving, and sometimes neurotic life of being a mother to an extraordinary son. Through the unnamed narrator, Lurie brings us into the mind…
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Mouth Trap, a prose poetry collection by Rebbecca Brown, reviewed by Gabriel Welsch
Rebbecca Brown’s collection of prose poems is the second book from a writer whose debut was the novel They Become Her. A novelist working in prose poetry risks the damning-with-faint-praise descriptor of someone whose poetry reads like that of a prose stylist’s. Tarring these poems with that brush would be very hard to do. The…
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Casey Smith Reviews Claiming a Body, a debut fiction collection by Amanda Marbais
Amanda Marbais’ most recent collection, Claiming a Body, is comprised of eleven short stories, each of which masterfully balances dark humor and human tragedy to create narratives that are buzzing with tension. Whether she is writing about shady drug deals, white collar crime, or the accidental death of a cat named Sparkles, the plots of…
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Three Princess Poems by Frances Donovan
What Snow White Swallows ginger snaps /a matchstick square pizza in the school cafeteriaher body spreading in the mirror / grotesque the white cheek of a poison applethe red cheek of a poison apple cookies from the keebler elvesgrow up fast /her fault her fault her fault arnold whole wheat bread /sweet bliss of chocolate…
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Em Mingus: “Confession,” new poetry for Haunted Passages
I don’t know where to startOr where you want me to startBut I’m hereAnd I’m tryingAnd I’m sorryI don’t remember much of last nightMaybe I had too much to drinkWe all make mistakes, right?I remember there was a lump in my throatAnd I remember being scared to speakAll the windows were shut and the air…
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Susan Nordmark: “Last Ghosts,” two flash fictions for Haunted Passages
Last It’s not even a rag. It would be a good idea to visit. What the doctor cooked up is not at all sustainable, I’m wanting to say. The hip replacement seemed to go well. I relied on it for a long time. We had a dull finish and dents from inappropriate handling, and some significant splitting. Eventually I…
Heavy Feather Review 