Author: Heavy Feather

Three Poems by Christina Olson

Citing Budgetary Concerns, the Hurricane Name Retirement Center Closes Its Doors Listen: they’ve closed the hurricane name retirement center. They cited Medicare, increased life spans—but really, everything changed after Katrina checked in. When she blew through the halls, water sprung from the ceilings. When she sprawled on the couch for Wheel of Fortune, everyone evacuated.…
Clues from the Animal Kingdom, Christopher Kennedy’s fifth poetry collection, reviewed by Jonah Davis

When the life we are born into isolates us, leaves us in an inescapable malaise, when ‘pain is the only feeling’ and we’re forced to watch time pass by through the eyes of an animal—where do we go? To religion? Family? Relationships? No. Here there are no gods, here family is but an empty word…
Fiction: “Driving Range” by John Scaggs

Like most of the men in the Wetherall family, Virgil had lost a finger or three over the years. The middle finger of his right hand had been taken by the timing belt of a 1973 Chevy Chevelle—had ripped it out at the root like an onion from the soil. On his left hand, he’d…
Two Poems by Conor Bracken

Running After Years My gait’s a mistake my feet keep making.Allow me to introduce myself: an unbridled trot.A hotel quietly on fire and the guestsasleep, dreaming of cleaner sheets.Of forgetting their phone chargersand overtipping the chambermaidsfor messes of deferred responsibility.My lungs inveigh their circuitry with air.What unhappiness propels the sunto punish everything with shadows?I once…
Poetry: “egg” by Tameca L Coleman

1 the desert demandsa new view when waiting is a death pop out the eyeturn the retinainside out turn out lungsmake the heart speak reverse the gut softenbone let followflesh innards wrapped blood and bone paste a shell in bright sun the exteriorblinds peck away the interior the protective eye has becomea…
Fish Boy, a poetry collection by John Gosslee, reviewed by Tammara Hoyt

“In the car he says, the important thing is that you’re okay.” Some fathers go beyond the call of duty to be there for their children, picking them up when they fall, setting them on their feet, hoping, believing in progress, even when those children are adults. Throughout Fish Boy, John Gosslee focuses on one…
Dameion Wagner reviews Emari DiGiorgio’s poetry collection Girl Torpedo

As luminaries Allison Joseph and Natasha Trethewey have already noted, DiGiorgio’s Girl Torpedo is a book that’s needed—needed to remind her readers that this struggle, this deep human yearning to be whole and to share, to recognize and to understand, and to call out is at no truce or ceasefire. Like the ever-present, heavily-armed battleship…
“Both the Substance and the Evidence,” a short story by Elise Burke

On the Sundays Harlow convinced me go to church, I never really listened to the sermon. But certain phrases stuck out. Maybe the pastor made sense of it all but I was caught up staring at Dot across the congregation as he held his jittery wife’s hand. Her legs bounced around nervously like God was…
Poetry: “Necessary Facilities Improvements” by Patrick Williams

Here’s the gougey bodega,the graying gym shoe power lines,sloping toward what televisiontells me is our drug corner. Out front I ghosted throughthe earliest blossoms of an uglyfistfight and didn’t look backuntil I knew it was over. Yards away a wet sweatshirtcloaked a cat’s corpse for mostof a winter, until they vanished:first the sweatshirt, then the…