Author: Heavy Feather

“Ghosts in the Trees”: A Review of Patricia Grace King’s novella Day of All Saints by Rachel C. Reeher

In Patricia Grace King’s Day of All Saints, a young Martín Silva de Choc meets Abby, an American student studying abroad at the Guatemalan language school for which he teaches. Abby’s long blonde braids and hypnotic laughter bring promise of a lovelier life in Chicago, but her presence is a stone in the water of his…
Three Poems by Lauren Bender

Misdirection Snow comes, heavy distraction. We snipe at each other in the mid-afternoon dark because there is no time for distractions. (i think?) no one is focused on a single wrong anymore or the wrong wrong. There is an itchy place for every injury we’ve built into our brain/keep building/keeplistening when we’re told we are…
Three Poems by Joshua Butts

Measley Ridge Road Moving with the weather is no optionfor those on Measley Ridge. No vessels are preppedfor when the Brazos sweeten. Shirley Hughes, send your laundry waterto the nearest stream. Ziplocs huddle the deathsof the holiest white poor with their ragged white meatand dry bushels requiring so many creamed sides.If this were Louisiana one…
Essay: “Another Person Asks, When Did You Become a Feminist?” by Lindsay D’Andrea

“It comes with the job,” my mother says—meaning a possibility that your boss may touch you when you don’t expect him to—“So why all the fuss,” “take it as a compliment,” after all “boys will be boys,” etcetera. This is the woman who raised me. I wish I were not ashamed by her philosophy, wonder…
“Cartesian Ghost Story,” an essay by Jeff Chon

I should avoid the old neighborhood, but I have nowhere else to be right now. It’s five seventeen p.m.—the day care closes at six—and the kids hate it when I pick them up early, when they have to say good-bye to their friends. Whether I like it or not, I have some time to kill,…
Fiction: “The Drip Drop” by Rita Bullwinkel

Behind Gosling’s house there is a giant black ball of goop that hovers above the ground. It drops on his cat and creates puddles that we have to sweep away in the winter so they don’t freeze. When Gosling goes on vacation and the backyard is left unattended leaves blow under the ball and mix…
Poetry: “Lone Wolf” by Jill M. Talbot

Lone Wolf Lone Wolf: dangerous andinadequate: see God: see proofof quantum mechanics: see Einstein:see WWIV: see roman candle: seeRenaissance: see writers: see Woolf: seeBook of Job: see impotent God: see existentialism: see internet meme: see joke: see punchline: see deadline: see autopsy. Lone wolf: pledgesallegiance to his own ego: see Freud: see flagpole: seeOedipus Complex:…
Three Poems by William Lessard

<en passant> the hammer i raised to my father’s skullholds open the bathroom window history is sometimes the breezethat enters through the daisy curtain in the moments before that momenti saw myself a flyinching a stippled surface joy was insect glorya moment rubbingeyelash legs in the history of survivor artthere is the theme of wishing…
Two Poems by Zach Mueller

Broke Bottles, Gold Models There’s no sign sayingchoke saltwaterdrowning, but that’show it happens—the absenceof a sign. The thingis what it is.Let’s be honest.You should gulp it like strangers eye-fuckinga bank teller.See how honestlyour throats reject quartzand feldspar as thoughwe abominateislandswith our lips. Don’t encourage.Don’t hang it up on a fishhook.These ghost crabsfear flashlightsbecause sunlight is…