Author: Heavy Feather

Essay Hybrid: “Introduction” by JoAnna Novak

IBegin with a lie. Life-stuck or stasis, miles orminds: unleash the lies.Bark them off. Begin un-urgent, unringed, grub-nailed and urgey, youngenough to be buyable,looking on labels. IIOnce I wended. A toA; after that—a curvet,a barreling. Set fromthe capital and droveborders over-fast,over-hard, o’er thevalley; his old car wasrazed, a bothered stateof dust. Mountainsabutted my path andrunaway…
Three Collage Hybrids by Guy Benjamin Brookshire

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Liberty Liberty looks in the mirror and over her shoulder far on the floor there is a bloody massacre. A hideous and murderous entertainment. In which the very best of people find themselves compelled at least every once in a while to complete their application and legally…
“Difficult People Are Everywhere”: Jennifer Caloyeras Interviewed by December Cuccaro

Jennifer Caloyeras is the author of two young adult fiction books, Urban Falcon and Strays. Unruly Creatures, published by West Virginia University Press, is her debut short story collection. In the collection, Caloyeras explores societal alienation, bodily betrayal, and the poignant search for a true intimacy often found through the safety of substitution. A teen…
Two Poems by Jill M. Talbot

A Picture of Me When I Was Young and Dead iThey say this picture is pretty,This picture of which I was dead for.They like me this way. Taking a photo with a laptopAfter a wedding. It’s already gone—I blinked, I moved.I grew teeth, I found a pulse.Am no longer pretty— The way the cashier took…
“We Sink Like Ships,” a story by Chelsea Laine Wells

This is what I learned: in the seconds after death, do nothing. Hold still and let it beat past into permanence because in the seconds after death everything is flayed open to the softest nerve-strung tissue and any move you make, any word you say, anything you touch will live forever on the end of…
Four Poems by Martin Ott

Dead Man Lying The difference between life and death is the same broken line between truth and lies. Time defines both. History holds the mantras of liars and recasts them in our history books. The walking dead has never been about zombies. Our reporters hurry to unearth time machines before the damned redraw the circles…
Two Poems by Rob Cook

My Bugs O daddy long legs in the orchids and wisteria, how you make my cock-cells swell! O caterpillar cubs folded in the fern petals, you are lovely as shoulders tied with ribbons and valentine nettles! That’s what she slipped into my ear when I told her my life was ruined by insects. “They said…
Two Poems by Jeremy Griffin

Pink Hibiscus You buried the hibiscus in the swath of untended earthwhere each summer morningthe mangy calicowho suns itself on the sidewalkshits and then kicks it overwith sand as if it’s even possibleto disguise what we leavebehind. You aerated the crumbled earthwith the shovel blade, churned itover on itself like the tracks of deadskin carved…
Three Poems by Phil Spotswood

growing up on TR84 You are shown a series of pictures by the visiting Earthmen: a blank crucifix, a doll with a missing eye, and a sunset bleeding in the ocean. The crucifix and the doll mean nothing to you, for they are products of a life sprung from the bones of an elephant graveyard.…