Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry: Karen Craigo’s “Small Gestures for the Never Departed”

There is a theory of ghostingthat says each side, blindto its counterpart, occupiesone space, and walks aroundthe other, or through it,in a dimension we are not equippedto know. But sometimeswe spot themin a single, lucid moment,and they are oblivious, funny-hatted,wearing the robes of their strangeness.And maybe they see us toofrom time to time and are…
Poetry: Adam Moorad’s “Villa Adrian”

you used toscrew a hicki lived withthat’s how we metwe slept together onceand it happened againin a celicai didn’t recognize youor even knowif it was actually youand on another nightyou danced for meand called mesomeone else’s nameand it reminded mehow i forgotyou knowi knowno one knowsabout this Adam Moorad is a poet, salesman, and mountaineer.…
Two Poems by Colette Arrand

The Xerox Machines Lose Their Will to Live First they made copies of body parts:hands, then buttocks, toes, and breasts.We thought this was intimacy, but they leftafter copying their resumes, didn’t come back.Whispers of layoffs, confirmed when cubicles grewempty, when fires were set to garbage cans stuffedwith what we’d made. Anarchy, once the vending machines,too,…
Two Poems by Ricky Garni

The Killer Truck It was after midnightwhen I saw the food truckpass by. At first I thoughtit was a bus. And thenI thought, No, it is a foodtruck. But where is it goingafter midnight? It has nowhereto go, but is going somewhere. Sometimes I wonder if the foodtruck saw me and wonderedwhere I was going,…
Fiction: Molly Prentiss’ “My Someone’s Ears”

The first things I loved about My Someone were his ears. They were smaller than average, and shaped like seashells, curved in on themselves and then hollow. They seemed to ask to be whispered into. Or I wanted to hold them up to my own ears to hear the ocean. Our first kiss was not…
Fiction: Amy Glasenapp’s “I Don’t Want to Bury Dreams Yet”

Tick tock, you say. My coat is nowhere to be found, and of course, my keys are in the coat. I disappear and come back empty-handed. You shake your head. On the way out you talk about real things: bills, Thanksgiving, weatherproofing the apartment. Things I don’t want to think about just now with the…
Baldur’s Gate II, a nonfiction book by Matt Bell, reviewed by Ryan Werner

Once a year, I drive an hour and a half to get pictures with some old wrestlers in Waterloo, Iowa. Danny Hodge, a retired boxer and wrestler with double tendons in his wrists that allow him to pop apples and break pliers, is always there. Jim Ross is there, too. Aside from his time in…
Juventud, a novel by Vanessa Blakeslee, reviewed by Leland Cheuk

Juventud is Spanish for “youth,” which is what is at stake for Mercedes Martinez, the fifteen-year-old in Vanessa Blakelee’s earnest and evocative first novel. Juventud is set mostly on a hacienda in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, where camping near the gates are desplazados (rural, indigenous people forced to abandon their homes due to the decades-long…
Blackout, nonfiction by Sarah Hepola, reviewed by Erin Flanagan

Blackout follows Sarah Hepola’s life as a drinker, starting with sips in grade school and progressing through her first drunk in junior high, which was followed by many, many more in high school, college, and beyond. This well-written and engaging memoir will appeal to all readers of nonfiction, particularly those interested in addiction narratives, and…