Author: Heavy Feather

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…
Fiction Review: Rebekah Bergman on No Moon by Julie Reverb

We begin No Moon with a paragraph-long chapter. There is no end punctuation. “I will say this only twice,” we are told in the opening line. And in fact, it is already the second time we’ve read this: that line is also the chapter’s title. And so, Reverb’s spiraling, lyric prose takes off, facing us backward as…
“Tell Us What Turn Your Life Took”: Linda Michel-Cassidy on The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante

The Story of the Lost Child is the fourth and final installation in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novel series. The first book, My Brilliant Friend, begins with the school-aged narrator, Elena, finding herself drawn to the academic life despite her family’s limited resources and lack of encouragement. This segment includes the history the Naples neighborhood where…
Fiction Review: Ryan Werner Reads True False by Miles Klee

Whereas some writers try out different voices, Miles Klee tries out different worlds. In True False, ghosts come alive, men walk on walls, and love is just a project for the Department of Methods, but the voice is persistent, sometimes to a fault: an intelligent destruction and self-aware deductivity of and with language, all at…