Author: Heavy Feather

Six Poems from Oliver Baez Bendorf’s The Gospel According to X

Flicker of orange outside the window. Day breaks into pieces. What man feels man enough? Twinge while the oil seeps in. Is not for chit chat. He brought himself forth and called himself X. That is the good news. Is this still the good news? Scientists believe all mammals dream. I believe in the necessity…
Three Poems by Kathleen Jones

The Appropriate Cold—for Amy Your death fell with a thud that bruised the rest of us.Now I’m homesick for a winter we can’t return to in a state I’ve long left and you rarely visited, the appropriate coldI don’t feel here. The Fleetwood, a metalbox diner nesting in snow, blue streetlit sidewalks on the approach,…
“Marvel,” a lyric essay by Jennifer H. Fortin

Why does it bother me when others marvel at what I don’t find wondrous? It has to do with naiveté, with undue congratulations. I feel bad every second of every day. Or it has to do with false enticement: they are trying, via Marvel, to elicit a dramatic reaction. I can’t believe x! Marvel as…
“An Important Message from a Mysterious Place,” poetry by Meredith Blankinship

If the haunting was a haunting you deservedhow do you expect to live withoutthe quietude of my displeasure? The facesthat show when the film gets developedharnessing all the fun of a lie to provesomething by transparency. When youput a light behind some ice, whenyou flick through with alabaster care.The scrolls are ancient but predictable.Who would…
“Notes from Toledo,” a micro-essay by Megan Martin

We got in a car and drove to Toledo. Toledo felt like bad news. I thought it was just your sister’s neighborhood where there were very few windows you could see through (bars, boards, broken glass, darkness), but those ghostly windows looked out at us everywhere we went. Their pit was raging at the door…
Two Poems by Jim Whiteside

The Waters There is a flood in my mother’s hometownthat will wash away more than gravel roads,leave behind so much more than silt and driftwood.As the waters of the Mississippi crawl upthe floodwalls beyond the marks from years past—The Great Flood of 1913; The Hundred-Year Flood of 1952,the year of her birth—the people of Cairo…
Live from Medicine Park, a novel by Constance Squires, reviewed by Deidre Elizabeth Comstock

In the novel Live From Medicine Park, we follow Ray, a documentary filmmaker, and his latest project: Lena Wells. Ray travels to Oklahoma, close to the town of Lawton, in order to record Lena Wells’ comeback concert in a “where are they now” like narrative. Ray works to unfold the mysteries surrounding Lena’s previous musical…
“Even Death Gets Lonely”: The Bong-Ripping Brides of Count Drogado, a novel by Dave K, reviewed by CL Bledsoe

First off, let’s talk about that title. It calls to mind Sixties’ horror and exploitation movies like Brides of Dracula. The brides in the novel are three mysterious sisters who were orphaned at a young age in a far-away place that most resembles Venice because of its canals and singing gondoliers. As the novel progresses,…
Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story,, an anthology of micro fiction, reviewed by Amity Hoffman

A crossdressing meth-addicted Pee-wee Herman impersonator, a mail-order minister, religious bees, an inflatable girlfriend, missed connections in Antarctica, and the first children in space all have one thing in common: they only need one hundred words to tell their story. Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story is an anthology of the best…