Author: Heavy Feather

Erasure: “Genesis 2, 3” by Demi Demirkol

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Demi Demirkol is an LA-based poet and artist. She is the author of I Have One Daughter or Maybe Millions, a self-published series of erasure poems paralleling archival erasure with bodily violence. She has participated in poetry workshops at University of Tennessee, Knoxville and University of California,…
Three Poems by Jared Joseph

As She Added the Dirt to Her Beauty She added the alphabet to her Fabulous muscles I died there. Before that I was a ghost Now I am a ghost. The wounds don’t heal Does the skin break As she adds the dirt to her beauty She adds the eyes her body. As I died…
Poetry: Al Ortolani’s “Buddhists Call It Monkey Mind”

Take toothpaste for instance―white foam splatteredon the mirror, on the vanity,on the chrome faucet.Each time you spit,lather drips down your chin,runs the brush onto your hands;you can smell mintthe rest of the day on your fingertipsWhen you wokethat morning, you were justanother sap with halitosis;by noon, you’re a reformer.Purpose evokes response.You begin to petition.A man,…
Essay: Anna Laird Barto’s “Telenova Tyrants”

I saw Fidel everywhere when I studied in Havana in 2004. Not the man himself, but his image, broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded, on postcards and billboards, grinning slyly through rings of smoke or gazing ferociously over the horizon, finger pointed at an unseen oppressor. His words were immortalized in black and red spray paint on the ruins…
Poetry: “is it god inside you?” by Charlie Waddle

On election night, it is latewhen the gathering, that is no longer a party,ends. The walk home becomes mostly silent.November night has no concern for union’s fractured stateit waits for morning, washes light awayFails to consider that darkness cannot be safe You are not safetelevision warns. The ocean is violent, even if its fury arrives…
Poetry: Ela Thompson’s “The Labyrinth”

My grandmother’s house was painted a dark, graying eggshell blueand was very near the southern border of the Catskill Mountains.After the death of my grandfather she sold the house, the barn, the manyacres of field and forest. No one was surprised.Death contaminates the heavy rivers of our bodiesand we must move…
Fiction Review: James W. Davidson, Jr. Reads Heavy Metal by Andrew Bourelle

In Andrew Bourelle’s 2016 Autumn Press Fiction Prize-winning novel, Danny is a loss survivor haunted by the gruesome scene he discovered. His mother committed suicide with .44 Magnum, and he was the first to find her horrific remains. Memories and the last image of her, along with the absence of a caring parent, torment Danny.…
Essay: “Feelings on Breastfeeding in the Age of Terror” by Lee Matalone

“For those who are against breastfeeding in public the issue is often not about themselves, but in protection.”—“The Breastfeeding in Public Debate,” published on a site focused on women’s health I tell myself, do not trip over that bag on wheels, or that bag on wheels, the one overflowing with bananas and avocados and…
Two Poems by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Monster Dolls Baby monsters with their stuffed teddy bear monster dolls, like regular dolls, only horrific, wounded, dangerous; which baby monsters see as something to teethe and love, to protect and be protected by. Dozens of them, in the secret nursery hidden out back of the house. Lining the bottom of the bed to keep…