Author: Heavy Feather

“An Important Message from a Mysterious Place,” poetry by Meredith Blankinship

If the haunting was a haunting you deservedhow do you expect to live withoutthe quietude of my displeasure? The facesthat show when the film gets developedharnessing all the fun of a lie to provesomething by transparency. When youput a light behind some ice, whenyou flick through with alabaster care.The scrolls are ancient but predictable.Who would…
“Notes from Toledo,” a micro-essay by Megan Martin

We got in a car and drove to Toledo. Toledo felt like bad news. I thought it was just your sister’s neighborhood where there were very few windows you could see through (bars, boards, broken glass, darkness), but those ghostly windows looked out at us everywhere we went. Their pit was raging at the door…
Two Poems by Jim Whiteside

The Waters There is a flood in my mother’s hometownthat will wash away more than gravel roads,leave behind so much more than silt and driftwood.As the waters of the Mississippi crawl upthe floodwalls beyond the marks from years past—The Great Flood of 1913; The Hundred-Year Flood of 1952,the year of her birth—the people of Cairo…
Live from Medicine Park, a novel by Constance Squires, reviewed by Deidre Elizabeth Comstock

In the novel Live From Medicine Park, we follow Ray, a documentary filmmaker, and his latest project: Lena Wells. Ray travels to Oklahoma, close to the town of Lawton, in order to record Lena Wells’ comeback concert in a “where are they now” like narrative. Ray works to unfold the mysteries surrounding Lena’s previous musical…
“Even Death Gets Lonely”: The Bong-Ripping Brides of Count Drogado, a novel by Dave K, reviewed by CL Bledsoe

First off, let’s talk about that title. It calls to mind Sixties’ horror and exploitation movies like Brides of Dracula. The brides in the novel are three mysterious sisters who were orphaned at a young age in a far-away place that most resembles Venice because of its canals and singing gondoliers. As the novel progresses,…
Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story,, an anthology of micro fiction, reviewed by Amity Hoffman

A crossdressing meth-addicted Pee-wee Herman impersonator, a mail-order minister, religious bees, an inflatable girlfriend, missed connections in Antarctica, and the first children in space all have one thing in common: they only need one hundred words to tell their story. Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story is an anthology of the best…
“Mythical Magic”: Gay Degani Interviews Tara Campbell

When I first picked up Circe’s Bicycle by Tara Campbell with its clean, stylish cover, I had to remind myself exactly who Circe was in mythology. Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Circe (/ˈsɜːrsiː/; Greek: Κίρκη Kírkē pronounced [kírkɛː]) is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, witch, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. I soon found…
“repeat means repeat means,” a poem by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

repeat means repeat means stop writing the same poemabout guns and cities and deadchildren who aren’t yours when there’s been so much rainthe sewers are spitting backwater writing the same poem you wander unpaved streetslooking for your son’s lost galoshas children who aren’t yours pretend to hold guns in his classroomaim crayons and legos and…
A Woman Is a Woman Until She Is a Mother, an essay collection by Anna Prushinskaya, reviewed by Vivian Wagner

Anna Prushinskaya’s collection of essays, A Woman Is a Woman Until She Is a Mother, interrogates the meaning and experience of womanhood and motherhood. She looks at the blurry, liminal boundary between these two states and tries to come to terms with the fact that there’s no simple, reliable definition for either one. Prushinskaya is,…