Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Review: Lucas Pingel Reads Matt Mauch’s Bird∼Brain

In the first lines of Matt Mauch’s third collection of poems, titled Bird∼Brain, he compares a songbird to “an estate sale ad/ packed with so many implausibly well-kept/ treasures”. The same could also be said for the poems in this book, which are packed to the brim with imagination, and dazzling in their linguistic and…
Side A Featured Essay: Harmony Neal’s “Allyship”

A response to the piece by the same name by Will Waller Oppressor: I’m here to help! I’m not like the other people from my group. I believe in equality for all. Oppressed Person: You’re standing on my neck. O: No I’m not! Wait, what? OP: You’re standing on my neck. Could you please get…
Poetry & Art Sequence: “Big Enough to Step Inside” by Xan Schwartz

Gemini Rising/Poem for Nellie It was your birthday and Iknew you and I didn’t know you. Your skin was glowinglike a cloud You were surviving to the tune of light beer to the tune of raspberries and a couple of cows to the tune of Joan of Arc’s head tilt You were singing loudly…
Poetry: Four Yelp Reviews by J. Bradley

Yelp Review: Boy Scout Troop 43 You will hold a flag, march through sweltering nervous systems: upper arms waggle in salute. There are patches for activities, a business card thin license to wield a knife: this is a tool for picking teeth clean, a magnifying glass to play God; the fire never answers. Yelp Review:…
Three Poems by Robert Balun

Self (American Continuum) I wake up: and my leg hurts my achilles specifically and I wonder if the body is finally eating itself I drink old water and can never catch up it just keeps pouring I switch and ask if this is the coffee promised to us by the management during the labor dispute…
Three Poems by Chelsea Bayouth

Heritage I am running with this package through the click-clackity of cobblestones + looking behind me as the wind blows my hair across my face + my eyes are wild + glisten + the sun is setting + I am scared and running. The city is a grind of buildings, such loud buildings that I…
Poetry: Abigail Welhouse’s “Unavailable”

The fantasy of being completely unavailable. A desert island, maybe, or the middle of the woods. In these fantasies, there are never insects and never sunburn. The more you do, the more people ask you to do. I dream of feeding my friends. They are seated around a large table. My own table is too…
Essay: “A View from Across the Pond” by Claudia White

Donald Trump’s first year in office as seen by an American living in Ireland. 01/04/2017 Donald Trump will be the President of the United States in less than three weeks. This horrifies and scares me but mostly makes me sad. I make jokes about him dying in bed but then my daughter says, “Pence…
Poetry: “November 8, 2016” by Leah Tieger

My host hands me the cast of a dinosaur’s bone. It was takenfrom the knee of an adolescent apatosauruswhich is like he says, a brontosaurus. The cast is brown, rough striations like and unlike wood, like and unlike stone. Numbers on the TV screen change red and blue. Their silent siren lights. How did you…