Author: Heavy Feather

“Being Alive Is Just One Way of Being Alive”: Grant Gerald Miller on Alan Michael Parker’s New Story Collection Bingo, Bango, Boingo

I left Memphis for Olympia, Washington, on the Amtrak with $200 tucked inside a copy of The Journal of Albion Moonlight. I had never heard of Kenneth Patchen. The bold, abstract cover designed by the groundbreaking New Directions designer Alvin Lustig caught my eye. But it was the title that truly captivated me: The Journal…
Poetry Review: Thoughts on Uche Nduka’s Bainbridge Island Notebook by Peter Valente

Uche Nduka explores the nature of eros and the political in terms of our present world. Desire that points to any utopic vision of an alternate world is often compromised by cultural and ideological factors. Pleasure is often tainted by class, power plays, and gender wars. We are a product of our time and perhaps…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Oranges” by Laurel Benjamin

A woman has taken a man into the kitchen, shows him the panstripped of its black coat—Taken years to form, she says, and grabs the unscented orange cleanser, like pickingthe tree, a globe ready to burst. She dreams the past, gurney ride down a hallway, and under the gas she’s breast-stroking in the pool with…
Side A Poem: “The Next Time I Talk to My Friends” by Peter Leight

The Next Time I Talk to My Friends I’m not leaving anything outNot putting anything awayThat I haven’t taken outAs part of the same projectWhen it’s dark insideWe’re sitting down together and turning on the lights quickly like William JamesIn order to see what the darkness looks likeThere are times when we lookAt the same…
Book Review: Anthony Borruso Reads Chris Campanioni’s Hybrid Text north by north/west

Despite its directional title, Chris Campanioni’s hybrid text north by north/west: (an attention to frequency) is a virtuosic linguistic collage that, more often than not, indulges in indirection and subversion. Taking inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock, who was known for his narrative deception and generic subterfuge (even going so far as to kill off his leading…
Poetry from Flavor Town USA: “Death Is on the Menu” by Anthony Cappo

Morning groggy, anxiety spike, and stumble out the door. Café smells of coffee, French toast, and menace. Every morning death on the menu. Maybe not written— might be down-low house special— but always there. You can’t “86” death. Chills the forks and spoons lying on the table. It looks slimming, grins the maître d’. The…
Fiction Review: Asha Dore Reads Em J Parsley’s Novella You, from Below

In Em J Parsley’s You, from Below, the speaker climbs an Appalachian mountain to deliver an envelope after their holler town falls apart. The speaker is the only survivor. Along the way, they meet folks and gather their stories of “rapture and decay.” This slim novella punches lyrically through landslides and loss, punctuated by often…
Fiction Review: Tara Van De Mark Reads Diana Oropeza’s Debut Collection An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance

An Incomplete Catalog of Disappearance by Diana Oropeza arrived by mail, slipped out of the envelope, through my hands, and onto the hallway floor. The size of a passport, it landed next to a banana peel and a pile of junk mail and I worried that this treasure would, like the subject it ponders, disappear. Instead, it…
New Music Essay: “How I Got into Free Improvisation” by Peter Valente

I remember as a teenager living in Fairview, NJ, and going down to the corner store and finding a cassette of Ornette Coleman’s Art of the Improvisors. I grew up listening to classical music and opera and I knew there was something about the sound of free jazz that I liked but it would be…