Author: Heavy Feather

Essay: “The Mourning After” by Diane Payne

Hungover with sadness, shame, booze, and fatigue, I walked with the dogs to the park. This time of year, when it’s cold and the ground is wet, no one is at the park. But there he was: the man with the bike charging his phone at the picnic table pavilion. After exchanging morning greetings, I…
Poetry: “Wolves” by Luke Newell

After Allen Ginsberg The worst minds of our fathers’ generation laugh maniacally as they fuck us to within an inch of our lives,And tell us how it’s our fault because we’re so entitled becauseWe want to buy a house, because we drink and smoke andWatch videos of cats on YouTube but they don’t realise that…
“Making Comics: My Graphic Novel Process,” a craft essay by Jess Smart Smiley

New Comic My name is Jess Smart Smiley and I make comics. My newest project is a square, interactive comic called Fantasy Quest, and it’s live on Kickstarter right now. (Oh, don’t worry—there are more plugs for Fantasy Quest to come—but let’s talk process first.) Hamburger Style The earliest comics I remember making were created…
“The Doctor Will See You Now,” a story by Kevin O Cuinn

When he opens his eyes, he’s back in the room, the one without doors, walls or mentionables. And a feeling that this isn’t new. Then a thought that this is old, which a) it is, and b) is worrying for the approximate duration of a sneeze. The path is hair, so much hair, the pretty…
Five Social Media Poems by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

Love Poem (15 Tweets) I would love to love the small apology in you, the tiny coffin for laws that no longer suit your stillness; I would love to love the depreciated value of your sources as you loop forth complete as marriage/mirage; I would love to love you, imaged in stone on the harmless…
Conjoining, a poetry collection by Heidi Czerwiec, reviewed by Matt Mauch

As with me seeing the coffiin-esque iron lung in the basement museum of the Nobles County Library, surrounded by photos of smiling polio victims inside various other iron lungs, and making sure I never went to the basement museum alone ever again, any gaggle of able-bodied and world-curious five-year-olds would no doubt concur, upon first…
“When Angela Asks Me a Question,” a poem by Antonio Lopez

—for my hermanita when she loses hope in school You’re armed with a non-toxic shadethat bleeds through Xeroxed sheets—the wicked clonesof an English textbook. Office Depot-issued holsterof highlight markers take aimat the 12 PT tremor. “Hey Tony, sorry to bother you.But what is this asking?” Thirty dollar uñas gloss over the district’s wear-and-tear,…
“AR-15,” a poem by Gabriel Welsch

A reason to burn the newspapers.Arrive to work in tears from hearing the Ardent words of parents on the radio immolating anyArguments about the right time, the right Areas to debate. Yearn for when the world ignitesArdor. Every few minutes Arch your back, deny the screen, roll yourArms to get the blood flowing properly. Watching…
Walking Backwards, a poetry collection by Lee Sharkey, reviewed by Toti O’Brien

On the cover of Lee Sharkey’s Walking Backwards, an anonymous oil painting—“Pogroms”, circa 1915. A long line of people crosses from left to right—their clothes the same color of the background, as if the landscape had already started absorbing them, soon to entirely obliterate them. Two of the men look vacuously forward—not far, as their…