Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry for Side A: “Militia Lands Hunger” by Jonathan Memmert

Militia Lands Hunger they’re out there— they wait for the likes of youliberal likes they so dislikelikes so unlike them they meet train drill exercisein quasi synchronized precisionas onslaught takeover practices fantasize they dress in para uniform camouflage guisesbare tattooed ideology from under their skinstand sentry cocked and locked as white rise political voices sound…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “The Murder Portrait” by David Luntz

After I killed my best friend, I dreamt I’d “walked into” the painting he’d left for me in his will. It was in the style of some Dutch Master: a portrait of a young man reading a letter above a bowl of fruit. I snuck up behind him and read the letter. The letter told…
Poetry Review: Tiffany Troy Reads Daniel Lawless’ Collection I Tell You This Now

I Tell You This Now by Daniel Lawless invites us into an intimate viewing of family albums and photography from the Polio Ward in Louisville, Kentucky, 1943-47. As a lookback at when the dead were still living and the hurt that remains in the aftermath of domestic violence and sexual abuse, this viewing is necessary…
Fiction Review: Eric Z. Weintraub Reads Jordan A. Rothacker’s Novel The Shrieking of Nothing

Jordan A. Rothacker’s sixth novel, The Shrieking of Nothing, marks his first venture into sequel territory, returning us to the futuristic world of RESURGA (23rd-century Atlanta) and the detective duo Assistant Sacred Detective Edwina Casaubon and Sacred Detective Rabbi Jakob “Thinkowitz” Rabbinowitz, who first appeared in Rothacker’s 2020 novel, The Death of the Cyborg Oracle.…
Comics Review: Sarah Shermyen Reads Xiang Yata’s Graphic Novel Optometry

“Graphic novel” or “graphic narrative” have become the terms used to describe comic books with a literary bent. I’ve always insisted on calling them comics, but Optometry really is a graphic novel, narrative, because it is a story of images and visuals. This book is not so much light on words as it largely functions…
“Cheers to the Weirdos! Trinity”: Jesi Bender Presents a Heavy Feather Favorites List for 2024

Here we go again! Putting together this year brings me such joy and I hope you find something beautiful here, too. Sometimes, it can seem as if no one reads anymore but making this list reassures me that there are a lot of us out there, still trying to learn, still trying to create, still…
Poetry Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Aditi Machado’s Collection Material Witness

You should read Aditi Machado. You should read everything she writes—I am on that path myself, but I’m only two books in, so we can race each other if you start now. Her new collection, Material Witness, is short. It contains six poems, two of which take up more pages than their word count might…
Bradford A. Masoni Talks to Suspect Gina Tron about Her New Memoir

Gina Tron is no stranger to raw honesty on the page. A prolific writer and poet, she has authored three memoirs, including her 2014 debut You’re Fine, praised by Interview Magazine as “vibrant, darkly funny, and courageously candid.” Her most recent memoir, Suspect, delves into complex topics like bullying, toxic female friendships, and the systemic…
“River on Fire”: Alex Gurtis Reads Darren C. Demaree’s New Poetry Collection So Much More

Darren C. Demaree’s latest collection, So Much More, feels particularly relevant in a year of political upheaval. So Much More is constructed around a series of abstracts, fragments, and political prose poems that deconstruct toxic landscapes disintegrating through the violence of human greed while addressing the fears of passing this world on to the next…