Author: Heavy Feather

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…
Three Poems by Catherine Valdez

Names I love how you wear the shade under a treeI see, even though you say I am your blind girl I hold your hand, so calloused that it reminds meof orange rind—tough, yet so easily peeled.I’m afraid I’ll expose all those chalk-like bones . I started school a week ago, a year late, and…
“Reality Depends on Perspective”: Claire Polders Reviews Deb Olin Unferth’s Wait Till You See Me Dance

With “Likable,” the opening story of Wait Till You See Me Dance, Unferth throws us into the pitfalls of social anxiety, one of the themes threading her impressive new story collection. In barely two pages she sketches the naked concern of an aging woman on how she is perceived by others. Should the woman resist…
Poetry: Jen Karetnick’s “What We Did”

We did handstands and YOLO leaps at the Holocaust Centers.We photo-bombed other tourists at the Holocaust Centers.We fish-lipped into selfies at the Holocaust Centers.We posted Insta stories of Shuvits and Front Foot Impossibles on our boards at the gravelpits of the Holocaust Centers.We stacked effects and filters at the Holocaust Centers—Snap game so strong, good…
Fiction: Brett Beach’s “Eastside”

The missing boy lived a block over, in the part of town where children often disappeared. This was in May, when you folded back your jeans to show me pink lace. Your skin was shadow beneath my fingers pressing toward warmth. Your mouth to mine, I joked that you were trying to steal my breath.…