Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction: Alex Myers’ “In the Dark”

The pots simmered on the stove, and NPR babbled through their steam, cadenced voices delivering the day’s news in careful clips. James felt good, better than he had for months, better than he’d felt since Dennis had gone to his ashram or whatever. He peeled carrots, swept the spirals of skin into the trash bin,…
C.F. Lindsey Reviews Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames, a new novel by Stefan Kiesbye

“Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames have no place in children’s games.” This haunting nursery rhyme drips with dread and foreboding, and establishes the tone for Stefan Kiesbye’s novel. Set in a small German village, the book is a shining example of classic Gothic literature, but spun with a modern twist. Knives, Forks, Scissors, Flames is indeed…
Two Poems by Jeremy Behreandt

Only when the last bureaucrat is hung from the entrails of the last capitalistwill we realize we cannot eat digital snow—quoted text from George Eliot’s Middlemarch in danbury, connecticut the snowdrifts snarlopinions over distances. maneki nekolifts one winter paw. bon soir papillon,bruise way in. to hope is a verbwith extension in space. to hope as…
Poetry: Terry L. Kennedy’s “Evidence of Things Unseen”

In the dream, there’s a forgotten pasture I can’t stop finding, just as, when I’m there, I can’t stop feeling at ease, at home—and isn’t that, before, what it was? Familiar clearing at the edge of the wilderness, whose centered oak created shade and, much later, lightning? As for family—Yes—and all of them—and with little…
Two Poems by Amanda McCormick

[ ] Bow to my thighs or I’ll break you with them.Anthills of poison, delivery track.Pump up the sex if you want to chewin the new year as her cavities grow.I couldn’t centralize my stomachafter you’d gone; I left my heart behind a fishnet. Flopping like bait in a fishnet,my…
Yi Lu’s New Poetry Collection Sea Summit, reviewed by Robert Young

It’s always important to read outside your boundaries, to encounter diversity of thought, and to broaden your literary horizons. Reading translated literature is a great way to do this. An often underrepresented part of literature, translated literature can, especially to other writers looking for technique to borrow, provide a whole new perspective and outlook on…
Fiction: Faith Gardner’s “Moonburn”

I’d never heard of moonburn either before I got one. My skin’s pale as dinnerware. I’ve been mistaken for a ghost on foggy nights, sent passersby sprinting and screaming in opposing directions. My paleness is serious. Hair and brows, too. Even my eyes are water-blue, which means hardly blue at all. The suggestion of blue. The night I got moonburned,…
Two Poems by Daniel D’Angelo

Eidolon at Autumn Like deadand still seen inthe back yard of water.Extra syrups:more years forcedout of a sycamorefor effect I’m likethe rest you getat the end. Waterthrown in your face.Lightbulbedin place. Well, water.Ourselvesfelt betterand more haunted. Was: all that I sawweathery, barkingbrush. I get all the ideastogether: I hearthis time: yousound like reheating liquidin a…
Robert Dean’s Novel The Red Seven Reviewed by C.F. Lindsey

Grit, outlaw-cowboy justice, and blood, lots of blood; these phrases come to mind when discussing Robert Dean’s novel The Red Seven, following the tale of a cowboy bounty hunter on a hunt for vengeance. After the brutal mutilation and murder of his family—the Masterson clan—the renegade known as “The Ghost” saddles his faithful mount and…