Author: Heavy Feather

Two Poems by Brian Beatty

Coyote Coyote—for Tony Fitzpatrick That forest that goesunseen for its own trees is full of mirrors, too: obscure, obsceneAmerican mirrors baring our teeth. We like whatever we notice oncewe dare to re-open our eyes. But those dark unknowns we still fearrun wild through our veins. And in the proud American waybullets whiz by our heads.…
Fiction Review: Zachary Kocanda Reads Softby Ryan Werner

There’s not much to writing rock and roll music. A popular quote says all you need is three chords and the truth. Researching this quote, I learned that it was about country music (from Harlan Howard), but it applies to rock and roll, too. In fact, Lou Reed said one chord was fine, and two…
“Stealing Breath”: An Interview with Bryn Chancellor by Erin Flanagan

Bryn Chancellor’s collection When Are You Coming Home? won the 2014 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. Her stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. She has received the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award in fiction, literary fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Arizona Commission…
Two Poems from This Is the Way to Rule: Joshua Young

Dear Survivors, we come upon a party of women cutting through the gut of a forest. when they see us approaching, they scatter. we keep shouting, we mean no harm, but just as quickly as we came upon them, they’ve vanished. we can hear breaths and twigs snapping, but cannot see them. our shouts keep…
The Spectators, a new graphic novel by Victor Hussenot, reviewed by Nick Francis Potter

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. 1. Victor Hussenot’s newest graphic novel, The Spectators, is his first published in English, and, well, it isn’t really a graphic novel at all. Or, it is and it isn’t. It is. (A note to my wife: this isn’t another opinion piece on misnomers and the politics…
“Moving Beyond Humanness”: An Interview with Carol Guess & Kelly Magee by Dana Diehl

A girl sheds jellyfish from her skin. A man grows a Joey in his artificial womb. One woman buzzes with locusts, while another carries a sparrow in her chest. A bank teller adopts a baby hippo he finds in a baby hatch. A man’s girlfriend gives birth to a live school of fish. In their…
Fiction: Lori D’Angelo’s “Neighbors”

Thomas hired a neighbor woman to spy on his wife. He told himself that it was for his wife’s own good. His marriage had fizzled, and he wanted to know why. His wife’s name was Donna. The neighbor’s name was Donnetta. At times, he felt like he wasn’t even spying. The neighbor was like an…
Book Review: Caleb Nelson on Nate Marshall’s Poetry Collection Wild Hundreds

Nate Marshall’s Wild Hundreds is a story about amnesia and national shame. In these poems, Marshall presents us with a host of difficult subject matter. He shows us high school dropouts and troubled towns with troubled teens. He shows us the deeply embedded systems of control and oppression in our places of leisure and work.…
Book Review: John Brown Spiers on Vertigo, short stories by Joanna Walsh

Vertigo is the kind of book it’s easy to let yourself be fooled by. It is smaller than the average prose collection. It is shorter. It has a very low number of lines per page, something you might realize if you flip through it or glance at a screenshot. These facts will make an impression…