Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Review: David Welper Reads Ben Mirov’s A Few Ideas from My Blackbox

Question: if you’re in a life-or-death situation, what would be the thoughts—no, ideas—going around in your head? Or, as Ben Mirov asks in his latest chapbook, A Few Ideas from My Blackbox, “Can you imagine a whippoorwill?” Mirov’s chapbook presents poetically ideological and existential questions in literal and figurative spaces. Each poem is short (one…
Book Review: Melih Levi Reviews Tiana Clark’s Equilibrium

Could it be magic?The white bunny we lift from the hatlike early fog on the road to work.(“Particle Fever”) To get through. To get through the day, the night. That miserable winter. Grief. All of that. To get through to you. What does it mean to get through? What does it mean, through? Does…
The Gloaming, a novel by Melanie Finn, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

Good writers conjure characters from the dust and ink. Great writers can resurrect them. Melanie Finn can certainly drag a character through the gauntlet, a skill that remarkably few writers can do with the precision shown often in her most recent novel, The Gloaming. With intertwined narratives, we see the results of failure and the…
Poetry: Five Found-Word Works of Resistance by J.I. Kleinberg

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. consume the unbearable this unwelcome we lost words J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, freelance writer, and co-editor of Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington (Other Mind Press, 2015). A Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2016 Ken Warfel Fellowship, her found poems have appeared recently…
Two Poems by Virginia Konchan

Insurrection Sonnet Night is irascible, like the words of hoary men who rule the world with their fistful of dirty dollars. Go ahead, fire me. Because personality emerges in the moment of dissent, as every toddler and Bartlebian figure knows. Before no, we are an unresisting marsh of mmm-hmm and yes sir. A veritable swampland.…
Poetry: “A Slow Pickling” by Tara Boswell

a drowned and legless female {insert your animal here}how sweet watch her commitment to being a life raftno just a life vest c’mon you always wanted my hands around your neck right after I flip the kitchen tableupending everything we were preparing for breakfasttake notes one clove of garlic in each cheek take your medicine …
Fiction: Joe Baumann’s “A Paper House”

When we knock on your door only a week after your husband’s suicide, flashing our badges even though we don’t need to, telling you we’re here to check the walls for the girl’s body, the fact that you don’t even flinch makes us fall in love with you again. You step out of the way,…
Dana Diehl’s Our Dreams Might Align, reviewed by Eshani Surya

We assume we are closer to other people than to nature. Maybe because we congregate in cities, maybe because we have perpetuated myths about how unlike animals we are. In Our Dreams Might Align, Dana Diehl challenges our notions of separation/connection, particularly in regards to the natural world. Diehl’s universes are ones of magic and…
Fiction: Fortunato Salazar’s “Don/Juan”

When I hit rock bottom, I talked Marissa into the Magic Chef tattoo. It would hurt, the tattoo artist said. Most painful location you could choose. Didn’t matter, the Magic Chef left her no choice. Now I’d like to introduce my Bible study group: Rick, Moose, Andre, Dave the Hammer. Take the shortest route to…