Author: Heavy Feather

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…
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,…