Author: Heavy Feather

“The Brilliant, Bright-Red Bowels of Bonnie Chau’s All Roads Lead to Blood”: A Review by Jesi Buell

“The Wolf was a Wolf, and had an innate wolfishness, which manifested itself in his longing to devour The Pretty Girl, tear her apart and slurp her down whole.“ All Roads Lead to Blood is a collection of loosely linked short stories from Santa Fe Writer’s Project’s 2040 Books Prize winner Bonnie Chau. Each story…
“Free Car,” fiction by Alex Kudera

After the click, I wonder which I like least, folks who phone too early in the morning or those who call late at night. Then I return to the other room, a small L-shaped kitchen/living room area, pour myself a cup of ambivalence, and lie low on the futon couch with my calves resting on…
Ordinary Misfortunes, a poetry chapbook by Emily Jungmin Yoon, reviewed by Callista Buchen

Chosen by Maggie Smith as the winner of Tupelo Press’ Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, Emily Jungmin Yoon’s chapbook Ordinary Misfortunes considers sexual violence against women, investigating the varied forces that enact and normalize it, while also focusing on what such violence means for women. In particular, as Ordinary Misfortunes weaves together historical and contemporary times,…
“Literary Shrapnel”: New Micro, a fiction anthology edited by James Thomas & Robert Scotellaro, reviewed by Bryan Jansing

When I was in the Navy in 1991 I found a book at the Exchange that would change my life. The book was Sudden Fiction: American Short Short Stories edited by James Thomas and Robert Shapard. It set a course in my life. I wanted to write fiction, I wanted to write stories. But I…
“A History of Hosts and Vectors,” poetry by Kristin Abraham

(This will not end well,they said when it began.But momentum appreciatesonly one way, so any onusthey bore was solelyin the act of throwingup their hands to lamentthe thumb of God, how ithovers over our heads.Because no man can ownhis sins when the veryworld is force majeureall the way down to itsspecks and quarks.) Our…
Unlanguage, an undead workbook novel by Michael Cisco, reviewed by Paul Dee Fecteau

I am not going to assume you’re here because you received the workbook in some innocuous way that in retrospect seems increasingly mysterious—say, a stranger handed it to you on a busy train platform or an unknown colleague stuffed it into your department mailbox. I acknowledge plenty of such stories are circulating on social media…
Poetry: Gene Goldfarb’s “they beat the last fish”

senselessfor his pride whenhe stood up to themon his iridescent finsand called their bibledirt in perfect Aramaicso they hid their shameand made him bleedlike his brethrenwhom they strangledand cut up and ate beforethey invented storieslauding themselvesas kings to the cows andsea creatures Gene Goldfarb, a Long Islander, loves writing and keeps trying it. His poems…
Elizabeth Johnston: “Trump Tweets @ Fairy Tales”

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Elizabeth Johnston’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Satirist, New Verse News, and Room Magazine, among many other magazines and collections. A teacher of writing, a feminist activist, and a co-founder of the 4-woman writing group Straw Mat Writers in Rochester, NY, she…
“Portrait of Desperation”: Paige M. Ferro on Rachel Lyon’s Novel Self-Portrait with Boy

David Foster Wallace once said, “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Art in all its forms serves to disrupt. Yet, there stands a difference between the grotesque and the garish, the disturbing and the obscene, art and invasion. This is the premise to Rachel Lyon’s debut novel, Self-Portrait with Boy. The main…