Author: Heavy Feather

Alex Gallo-Brown: Remarks on Ben Lerner’s Novel 10:04

About a quarter of the way through Ben Lerner’s recent novel 10:04, the novel’s narrator, a Brooklyn-based writer/professor who holds an uncanny resemblance to his creator, is informed by an acquaintance, “You sound like your novel.” He has just finished introducing himself this way: “I wanted to wave to you when you came in but I had…
Fiction: Three Atrocities by John Dermot Woods

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. New Jersey In the suburbs of New York City, the police were called to detain a trespasser who had been witnessed climbing the fences of several residents’ backyards and digging up their lawns with a steel shovel. The trespasser was a woman, a mother who said she…
Dryland, a novel by Sara Jaffe, reviewed by Genevieve Hudson

Think back to your early teenage years. What do you remember? Perhaps specific moments come flooding back. Maybe it’s more of a general feeling tinged in dusky sepia. It is a time when we are figuring out how to define ourselves, when we are learning what we want to say no to and when we…
“A Prose Poem I Started a While Ago and Never Finished … Until Now!” by Bradley Sands

John wills the creation of a farm in Times Square. Tobacco crops smash through the pavement, sending fire hydrants and sprays of water skyward. A cow commutes to the pasture, forcing crowds to press themselves against store windows, suppressing their ability to breathe. I guess I don’t really know much about farming, which is why…
The Secret Games of Words, stories by Karen Stefano, reviewed by Nick Sweeney

Writers should excel to be more than simple transcribers of thought and action; they should be the stethoscope of every letter and every word, taking the pulse as it quickens and stops. Karen Stefano, author of The Secret Games of Words, is one of those writers, and the collection’s theme is a type of wordplay on steroids—not…
Poetry: Nick Barr’s “craigslistgirls”

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Nick Barr lives in San Francisco, where he does product management for an Internet startup. His work has previously appeared in Very Bad Poetry. He is a tiny speck in the Twitterverse. Photo credit: Prawny, morguefile.com
Three Poems by Thomas Patrick Levy

How Circles Work Sometimes I don’t let it bother me and sometimes I spend the whole night staring at the mirror next to the bed thinking WHEN WILL THIS STOP HAPPENING TO EVERY SINGLE MONSTER. And in the morning usually I feel alright. It’s a wave, parabolas, math. It’s a cycle still but you know…
Poetry: Three Basic Cable Couplets by Larry O. Dean

Mia Is on Cloud Nine Mia is on cloud nine when she’s invited to join a modeling agency. Frightened and confused, she wanders the streets of Boston wearing a blood-soaked blue dress with $10,000 in her pocket. There’s a Sicko on the Loose There’s a sicko on the loose, and he’s managed to kidnap little…
Nick Sweeney on With Animal, a collaborative short story collection by Carol Guess & Kelly Magee

Fiction shows the humanity of our own nature. It’s a reflection of what is and what could be. With Animal, cowritten by Carol Guess & Kelly Magee, is one of those collections of fictions. It squirms, it screams, it claws at you. With every story, the reader is introduced to animals, to mothers, to the…