Author: Heavy Feather

Three Poems by Jill M. Talbot

Retrial: If We Just Lay Here If I just lay hereLet’s just lay hereIf we just lay hereIf you are the heroI will be the bad guyIf I am the bad guyYou can be the heroIf we just lay hereIn our superhero costumesIf we wear our costumesTo bedWe’re something else entirelyIf we’re something else entirelyWe’re…
Fiction: “Routine Cleaning” by Cate McGowan

Streetlights still gleam—their night-timers tick toward daybreak. You drive dawn’s early light, the rush-hour race. You park in a pot-holed lot, sit for a minute, delay entrance to your periodontist’s building, sigh at the drizzle, murky sky, construction cranes. Across the street, ambulances blurt horns as they enter a hospital breezeway. An empty freight train…
Seven Political Animals by Jessy Randall et al.

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Jessy Randall’s visual poems have appeared in Poetry, Rattle, and The Best American Experimental Writing. A collection of her diagram poems, How to Tell If You Are Human, is forthcoming from Pleiades Press in 2018. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is bit.ly/JessyRandall. …
Two Collages by Erin Case

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes Agoraphobia Traveling Light Erin Case is an award-winning visual artist based in Midland, Michigan, with a focus in collage. Working in both analog and digital methods, she is regarded for the marriage of surrealism, sincerity, and evocativeness that is present throughout her body of work. While still an…
Two Poems by Rachel Edelman

The Real Work There’s no reality TV showthat opens with a close-up of fingers snappingone twig and anotherto stack a stove with kindling. In an off-the-grid cabinI slip a lit match beneath a birch bark curl.Splinters creak, a whine wanes,a flame ascends, whoosh.Musical interludes?Shavings fizz;sap ekes out a pop.Wood chips turn to coals;flames grow hungry.…
“Everybody’s Hurt,” flash fiction by Jill M. Talbot

Everybody’s Hurt “Can we do this outside, I want a cigarette.” “I heard that phone call, played it over and over, it sounded real—there’s a girl in real trouble, I thought—now just tell us what happened.” “Nothing happened.” “So you called 911 for fun?” “I didn’t say that, I said that I was confused.” “Are…
Two Poems by Success Akpojotor

two BUTTons sitting on our faces Nature’s changing course remains unsliced like a big garlic bulbrendezvousing in cycles of loops and a merry-go-round in an abyssinhabited by gypsies with no roots as a phone call is now a twentiethcentury culture: but we’ve seen this a thousand times from 1918 to 45& two BUTTons sitting on…
“TRANSCRIPT: Donald Trump’s Speech Responding to Assault Accusations,” erasure by Mackenzie Bush

And so now we address the slander and libels that was just last night thrown at me by the Clinton machine and the New York Times and other media outlets, as part of a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack. It’s not coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment, and all together at…
“Dumb Bunny Bomb,” a poem by Eric Tyler Benick

I think they dropped it this morning I awake in a warm pot with heirloom carrots and herbs de Provence asking what’s for dinner Outside my window is New York except today it is Laramie Wyoming I am told it is like this everywhere No casualties more a staggering casualness Televisions check their phones A…