Author: Heavy Feather

“We Were Happy, Until We Were Told We Could Be Happier”: Linda Michel-Cassidy Reads Sarah Gerard’s Sunshine State

Counter to familiar ideas of Florida: spring break, the spectacle that is South Beach, and golfing old-timers, in Sunshine State, Sarah Gerard offers periphery, rather than underbelly or façade. Gerard, a Florida native with a fascinating past, examines the cultural phenomena that shaped her family’s story. She writes with insight and empathy, never once disparaging…
Nonfiction Review: Jackson Nieuwland on The Sky Isn’t Blue by Janice Lee

I used to annoy my sister by insisting that the sky was white and the clouds were blue. It annoyed her because she knew the sky was blue, everyone knows the sky is blue, even if you’re blind you know it. If she hadn’t been so certain, she wouldn’t have been annoyed. If she hadn’t…
“Velvet & Paint”: Rachel Sharp Reviews Tara Deal’s That Night Alive

In Tara Deal’s That Night Alive, a young crypto-reporter pulls us backward through her life as a writer by way of her sporadic, journal-like entries. We begin on the eve of her predetermined death date—due to an unnamed disease—on which her final moments are being spent under the warmth of a velvet blanket, looking out…
Review: Jacob Singer on Michael Helm’s Novel After James

“The story seemed to confirm the existence of a thing not yet named, like an invisible planet postulated through math, the evidence of bending light, gravitational forces.” The pleasure of Michael Helm’s After James stems from how theory works in modern science. Currently, scientists don’t have to see to believe. Einstein couldn’t test his theories…
Luke Jeffrey Reviews Matthew Burnside’s Short Story Collection Postludes

The hero is too late. The dragon is unstoppable, and the princess has died prematurely. Must the story end there? Could there be a hint of redemption in the years to come, when the hero finally comes to terms with his guilt and grief? Matthew Burnside explores what happens after life falls apart in Postludes,…
Dust Bunny City, prose poems by Bud Smith, reviewed by Michael Gillan Maxwell

Dust Bunny City, Bud Smith’s latest collection of prose poems, is a wonderful collaboration with his wife, Rae Buleri, who illustrated the book. Organized in two sections, Tic Tac Toe and Orange Peel, the pieces unfold in a deliberate story arc sequenced like songs on a vinyl album. An album you’d flip over and listen…
“locker room talk,” a poem by yarrow yes woods

i have not heard someone say grab ‘em by the pussyin any locker room. what i have heardis she just lay there so i stuck it in her assin middle school. this was not in the locker room,but at the row of lockers outside my homeroom.laughter of all kinds. this wasn’ta boys’ club. the grin…
Three Poems by Lucian Mattison

Una Trumpada Defined, punching a Trump supporter or being punched by a Trumpsupporter. Perhaps both, but that’s too egalitarian for its namesake. Le di a ese racista de mierda una trumpada fenomenal.Ese racista de mierda me dio una trumpada apocalíptico. And then you dream about punching racists in variety of circumstanceswhich only makes them more…
Poetry: Three Dead Wrestler Elegies by W. Todd Kaneko

The Grand Wizard of Wrestling Can Make You a Man The Grand Wizard can take a boy outof his everyday skin, clothe him in quasarand chrome, in husks left by constellationsbefore they rose to Heaven. The Grand Wizard stands by your side,cackles in your ear, turns your wishesinto promises, into bare knuckles. The Grand Wizard…