Author: Heavy Feather

“As Per Instruction”: Tetra, a graphic novel by Malcom Mc Neill, reviewed by Zachary Vaudo

Brilliant worlds and creatures, subversive metaplot, meticulously crafted art. Tetra is at once a product of its time and ahead of its time. Created by Malcolm Mc Neill, Tetra is a fantastical sci-fi journey through space and dimension. Opening with a look into the past, Mc Neill’s introductory essay details his interactions and collaborations with…
Two Blueprints by Nicole McCarthy

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Nicole McCarthy is an experimental writer who earned her MFA from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared in Glass: a Journal of Poetry, The Shallow Ends, Dream Pop Press, b(o)ink, Crab Fat Magazine, Ghost Proposal, FLAPPERHOUSE, Tinderbox Poetry, The Fem, Memoir Mixtapes, Civil Coping Mechanism’s…
“Shut up and dribble,” poetry for by Tara Campbell

Shut up and dribbleShut up and playShut up and stand for the anthemShut up and step out of the carShut up and put your hands behind your headShut up and bleedShut up about your wrongful death suitShut up about your rights Shut up and take your mylar blanketShut up and get in the cageShut up…
Three Poems by Gina Marie Bernard

Dry Drowning The farmer tilts his Monsanto cap back from the bronze horizon of his forehead, stabs a finger to Formica with enough force to rattle silverware, and swears to God—and those of us in the café— that he most assuredly has found a writhing bowfin buried in the black soil of his north forty…
Fiction: Marleen S. Barr’s “A Feminist Extraterrestrial Special Forces Commander Causes Trump to Become Gone with the Wind”

The civilian body armor market was valued at $72.2 million in 2016 and is expected to more than double by 2024, according to Grand View Research.—Tiffany Hsu, “With Schools as Targets, Security Outfits Flourish,” The New York Times, March 5, 2018, A17. I was sitting in the eye doctor’s waiting room scared to death because I…
Poetry: “Non-” by Britt Canty

Boundaries. We need boundaries, you said. You were nothing if not a man of reason. My fingers raked the cement, still clay-like. I wanted to leave an impression before it turned solid. Before you left. Shards of shell and rock crowded into the skin beneath my nails. I tried to write my name so that…
“The Autolycus Syndrome,” flash fiction by Jay Merill

Giles lived for dressing up in quirky costumes and pointing people in the wrong direction. Trickery was his forte. He was all wolf at heart but smiled at everyone with the sweetness of a curly sheep. Baaa. The snag was all his feats were imaginary and more than anything he wanted real. He wanted real…
“The True Story of William T. Vollmann’s Research Assistant,” an essay by Jordan A. Rothacker, William T. Vollmann’s Reasearch Assistant for Carbon Ideologies

Trust me, I know I’m lucky. Once upon a time, I was a college kid in the Nineties reading William T. Vollmann, my mind blown with almost every sentence, and now he’s someone I call a dear friend. My child knows him as Uncle Bill. I also call him boss, as I had the honor…
“Everything Was Cliché and Nothing Hurt,” an essay by Alaina Symanovich

Paint this scene: imbue it with optimistic lighting à la Glee and the stench of yesterday’s cafeteria surprise à la every public high school in America: fill in any gaps with some universal notion of teenage angst and low-grade depression. This particular story unfolds in Smalltown, Florida, a wart on the pallid swampland; maybe it…