Author: Heavy Feather
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Poetry Review: Casper Orr Reads Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Collection Girlhood x A Haunting
The past is haunting. It’s a common turn of phrase, but it still holds incredible weight. Jessica Rae Bergamino’s Girlhood x A Haunting examines this idea of past trauma being an oppressive, haunting force through an exploration of her childhood. Through a spectral retelling of her childhood experience with abuse, sexual assault, and neglect, Bergamino…
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Bad Survivalist: Two Poems by Armando Jaramillo Garcia
Metamorphosis With the window open, the room comes to life with a variety of sounds, the street, just outside, I believe is a ventriloquist, making me think all its quarrels and serenades are just behind me. The sun, now riding under the earth, has never set, it just sits there, not thinking but giving off…
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Book Review: Matt Martinson Reads Stéphane Mallarmé’s Long Poem A Roll of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance
My introduction to Stéphane Mallarmé was unique. My college courses that touched on literary Modernism never mentioned him. Nor did my theory courses—despite his looming, spectral influence of Derrida and De Man—ever even say Mallarmé’s name. And what’s more, when I finally did “discover” Monsieur Mallarmé, it was not via his most famous work, A Roll…
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Side A Fiction by Jon Doughboy: “Your Mother Is on Her Way”
My mother’s lawyer called me this morning which came as a surprise because I didn’t know my mother had a lawyer or would have a need for a lawyer or even knew any lawyers. As a matter of fact it wasn’t the lawyer, a Mr. Defiore, Esq., who called but his secretary, introducing herself as…
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New Side A Poetry: “Called Up / 2025 USA” by Jonathan Memmert
Called Up / 2025 USA We live in a place called what’s the differenceWe swim in an ocean called what’s to know We have something to say called who caresWe fall in love to a song called who remembers We wake to each morning called rewindWe eat meals each day called handouts We go to…
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Fiction Review: Emily Webber Reads Josh Denslow’s Sophomore Collection Magic Can’t Save Us
What surprised me most about reading Josh Denslow’s new short story collection, Magic Can’t Save Us: Eighteen Tales of Likely Failure, is that while I loved encountering all the magical creatures, the actual humans are the most compelling parts of these stories. Every story, laced with humor and sarcasm, calls out how easy it is…
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New Poetry: “Inventory” by Em Townsend
The law of conservation states that energy in an isolated system will remain constant over time It is day 2 of post-graduate reality: alreadyyou are lonely Your hair is choppy around your forehead from where you trimmed it yourself in a moment of desperation, wanting to feel like you had control over something, wanting to…
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Nonfiction Review: Asha Dore on Lidia Yuknavitch’s Memoir Reading the Waves
Like many of Lidia Yuknavitch’s readers, I was once her student. I met Yuknavitch first through The Chronology of Water, a book that gave me permission to abandon literary structure in a way that made memoir feel closer to telling the truth. When I found out she’d be heading the nonfiction program at Eastern Oregon…
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Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “The Pit” by Sarp Sozdinler
People come to Cannon Hill for two reasons: to die quietly or to watch the gators. The gator pit is behind the Shell station. There’s a faded lawn chair wedged in the fence and a warped “NO TRESPASSING” sign that everyone ignores. It’s not an attraction in the official sense. The town doesn’t list it…
