Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction: Jane Liddle’s “The Last List”

When she was born, her mom was on her back, in the hospital, confused and in a hazy pain, twilit spots scattered across her eyes. Her dad, in a different room in the same hospital, fiddled thumbs, paced to and fro, rocked back and forth, checked his watch and then checked the clock, and watched…
Fiction: Anne Valente’s “Like the Light of Blue Water”

The voices came again, drifting through brick walls, and Simon stopped typing once more, listened through the apartment’s silence. The third time today—at least the seventh time this week—and though he distinguished the steady undulations of two voices, one male, the other female, he could not tell where they were. Sometimes they seemed to be…
Poetry: “The Beautiful Ex, Who Was Once on TV” by Kyle Kineman

I still smell the sweat of machineson your chest, the grease of your night-shiftpalm, you were always oil on canvas,a James Dean in altar boy blues. I knowI’ve looked at you too many times latelyin the photos you’ve posted. You look good—your wet white shirt outlining every church boybulge as you emerge from some Malibu…
Poetry: Sarah Duncan’s “Umpqua”

*For those killed by Chris Harper-Mercerat Umpqua Community College The school is closed. The school is open tobodies, warm and laughing. The school isonly open to ghosts. There are 10 ghosts 9wounded, 10 dead 320 millionwarm, wounded. The gun is coldand apologetic. The gun is warmand laughing in cold hands, white boyhands in a…
Hoopty Time Machines, fairy tales for grown-ups by Christopher DeWan, reviewed by Eric Andrew Newman

It’s very fitting that Christopher DeWan, the author if the new book Hoopty Time Machines, lives in Los Angeles. After all L.A., or La La Land as it’s also known, is the land of dreams and fairy tales. In his previous book, Working and Other Essays, there’s an essay in which DeWan references the permeability…
Five Poems by Liza Flum

Daily Action Today I call my representative.I call the one who representsmy representative: Representative,youfloating somewhere over my shoulder, crow on the telephone line, squat black spanof my hand in the polis, what little markdo I make on the whitelandscape of this world that asks for my bloodand asks and asks as the bandageasks the woundtill…
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,…