Author: Heavy Feather

Perpetua’s Kin, a novel by M. Allen Cunningham, reviewed by Laura-Gray Lovelace

There are books that take more time to read, not because the plot isn’t interesting enough, characters not engaging, or life gets in the way, but because they are full of powerful scenes that demand to be meditated on before moving on to the next. Perpetua’s Kin, by M. Allen Cunningham, is one of these…
Fiction from Our Colony Beyond the City of Ruins: “The Sea Captain’s Ghost” by Janalyn Guo

Entering the city of Boris from the sea, the Sea Captain’s Ghost notices a mollusk on the back of his neck and peels it off. The city is full of flower gardens. People from all over the world come to Boris for its flower gardens, he is told by a billboard. Flower trellis–covered towers jut…
“Mon Cher Apollinaire”: Jordan A. Rothacker’s Death Day Letter to the Father of Surrealism

November 9, 2018 Mon Cher Apollinaire, It has been one hundred years to this day since you left us. Since I was a young Joycean—a generally weird-bookish-kid who at seventeen joined the International James Joyce Foundation, wrestling with angels and giants beyond his grasp and understanding—I have found your name intriguing, your poem “Zone” enchanting,…
Micah Zevin Reviews Ruth Danon’s New Poetry Collection, Word Has It

The word has insurmountable potential and power to guide readers on and through a seemingly endless but ultimately finite voyage. Word Has It, Ruth Danon’s latest poetry collection, is a philosophical three-section, chapter-book prose poem, where, Word, its main character—whose thoughts and narrative are italicized—is a kind of literary, film noir-ish detective searching for everything…
Guignol & Other Sardonic Tales, Orrin Grey’s third short story collection, reviewed by Maxwell Malone

“Upstairs, the chair waited, with its bloody hooks and screws, and he knew exactly who it waited for.” —from “Guignol” by Orrin Grey Rarely is it possible to say that a short story collection manages to not only taxonomize, but diligently explore, the massive, fractal landscape of the horror genre without forsaking its unifying…
All That Man Is, David Szalay’s fourth novel, reviewed by Ray Barker

British author David Szalay’s latest novel—a term which doesn’t capture Szalay’s unique approach to the genre—is a restless, schizophrenic thing. Divided into nine sections featuring nine different men of at least six nationalities, set in approximately thirteen countries, the canvas Szalay covers is impressively wide. The men range in age from seven to seventy-three, and…
Erin Flanagan Reviews Jamel Brinkley’s Debut Story Collection, A Lucky Man

Absent fathers abound in this debut collection of stories, leaving behind their complicated legacies of race and love. As Eric says in “Everything the Mouth Eats,” “Isn’t it family that, in so many ways, determines our approach to life’s deceptions?” One feels the holes left by these absent fathers on every page, as the characters…
Two Poems by Kyle Harvey

Glacier—for Danny Rosen and Jack Mueller We are the sea and we rise with the break offslide-in of ice,the direction easy over grease,the way melt path-slick. We have notany or much time. Or, hell,we may have forever. What will we do? Thesefinal and endless days, does it matter? Why do we expectmeaning to be profound?…
Two Poems by Jill Khoury

For Weeks I Have Been Waiting for Something Pleasant to Write About But to no avail, soI clipped some items from the daily paperWhen I come across these items I send them on It’s better than talking about the goddamn weatherI am a clipperI don’t keep at it too long It’s funny that there are…