Author: Heavy Feather

Two Poems by Jeremy Griffin

Pink Hibiscus You buried the hibiscus in the swath of untended earthwhere each summer morningthe mangy calicowho suns itself on the sidewalkshits and then kicks it overwith sand as if it’s even possibleto disguise what we leavebehind. You aerated the crumbled earthwith the shovel blade, churned itover on itself like the tracks of deadskin carved…
Three Poems by Phil Spotswood

growing up on TR84 You are shown a series of pictures by the visiting Earthmen: a blank crucifix, a doll with a missing eye, and a sunset bleeding in the ocean. The crucifix and the doll mean nothing to you, for they are products of a life sprung from the bones of an elephant graveyard.…
“Everything Is Good Here, Too”: Fiction by Jen Michalski

Your sister calls. You rent a car and come as soon as you can. Grass peeks between sidewalk squares outside your mother’s house, squares no longer able to hold the chalk of your hopscotch, of your sunflowers and stick figure ribbon-haired girls. A water-rotted shingle, a twisted drainpipe, hint at chaos within. A collective wheeze,…
Fiction: Miles Klee’s “The Milkman’s Exhaustion”

Conventionally handsome, but why the fuss over that? He’s nothing special, nothing unique. There exist a million men who have his kind of beauty. Perhaps that’s why it is in such high demand. His truck runs perfectly, never stalls. Purrs at the curb like a big dumb cat. Milk bottles clink in his milk bottle…
“The Me/Not Me Game”: Uzodinma Okehi Talks with Elizabeth Ellen

I shouldn’t just say we’ve all had those moments. Who’s we? And speak for yourself, right? So I can tell you, there’s a part of my life so clouded, fraught with delusion, so much more about my own failings, probably, more than any particular woman, or girl—skip the romance, jump cut right to screaming, howling…
“There’s Another Side to D. Foy, and It’s Absolutely Golden, but Don’t Take My Word for It, Just Listen to My Mother-in-Law”: Susie Burch Interviewed by Jordan A. Rothacker

D. Foy’s first two novels are not light, to say the least. Made to Break (Two Dollar Radio, 2014) and Patricide (Stalking Horse Press, 2016) tackle dysfunctional friendships, betrayal, dysfunctional families, abusive fathers, pre-teen drug use, violence, death, depression, and more violence. However, both received rave reviews and rocketed Foy into indie publishing darling status,…
Ragged; or, The Loveliest Lies of All, an anthropomorphic crime novel by Christopher Irvin, reviewed by Robert Young

Going into this book, I didn’t really know what to expect. I wasn’t familiar with the author’s other works, so what attracted me to this book was the premise alone: a feral twist on crime fiction, as the book’s back blurb informed me. I was intrigued. My interests were thoroughly piqued. I read onward. A…
Warewolff!, an archive by Gary J. Shipley, reviewed by Sean Oscar

I had to read Warewolff! in bursts. I found that sitting down with it for too long left me feeling hollowed out. Shipley is a skillful engineer of abominations, and there is certainly something rewarding in following the paths he sets before the reader, but be warned—this is an intense and difficult book which will…
“Genuine and True”: An Interview with Melissa Fraterrigo by Erin Flanagan

Melissa Fraterrigo’s first novel in stories, Glory Days, captures the desperation and beauty of living in the hardscrabble Midwest. Populated by fathers and daughters, lovers and enemies, the living and the dead, these characters struggle to figure out what they want and how to get it, along with the complicated order of what they need…