Author: Heavy Feather

Three Original Poems by Choiselle Joseph

Hummingbird, or, First Blood at Witching Hour The night I first retched hummingbirdfeathers my mother said it was normal. Two a.m., both hands tremble-clingingto porcelain, the beak lodgedin my abdomen. Propeller wingsbuzzed against lining, bowlfilling with bile. She stroked my back, okra-slimylike a newborn’s cheek. Peachand lime-green clods of plumagelaunched from my throat. You get…
New Side A Poetry by Min Woo Chong: “I dare not look out”

the exit lights along the aisle are blinking red.red like the sunset over ocean outside, streamingin through the window I don’t dare look out.out, as the light leans in, the cabin is gold,gold framing for one final sunlit bloodstained picture. that bloodstained picture of the man beside mepraying for a golden miracle from the sky…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads Luke Johnson’s Collection Distributary

In the rare and happy occasion of receiving a new Luke Johnson poetry book, one is ready to be floored. Those of us who have read :boys and Quiver know what we will get; it is not predictability, but surprising turns and brilliance. As we turn the first page of Distributary we encounter: “For you,…
“Visiting the Dilapidated with Hope in Your Heart”: Abbie Kiefer Interviews Poet Kelly Gray

Kelly Gray’s Dilapitatia is, in many ways, a book about haunting—how lineage keeps shaping the present, how the dead remain with us, how our minds and bodies keep returning to the mysteries that possess us. I recently talked with Gray about her collection. Gray is the author of Instructions for an Animal Body (Moon Tide…
“Tell It Slant”: Shannon Nakai on Recollection and Reality in Melora Wolff’s Essay Collection Bequeath

“Before she opened the book, and before I entered this picture, I did not know that love is a deed …” So culminates the themes of Melora Wolff’s latest essay collection, Bequeath, published by the Louisiana State University Press. Part ode to a father figure who is a loving, enigmatic storehouse of imagination, part unflinching…
Fiction Review: S. D. Stewart Reads Samuel M. Moss’ Novel The Veldt Institute

“Of course, the Veldt Institute is not commonly known—likely no one outside the Veldt Institute is aware of its existence—but it is clear that those who arrive do so at the exact time that is best for them.” This is not a review, per se. It is more a series of impressions and associations meant…
Side A Poetry: “Contrary” by Alina Zollfrank

We packed bottomless bags, sharpened ↑ stubby pencils, ticked none of the boxes, choiced □□□□multiplicity, essayed our thesis-loathing hearts out, regurgitated forgettable dates and wrong facts, and ran ○○○ circles around a track that put us in our ꜚ ꜚ ꜚ corners. We trusted suspiciously, argued respectfully, attended religiously except when we weren’t. We borrowed…
“The River Inside and Out”: Dave Karp on Matt Trease’s Poetry Collection The Outside

When I think about what it truly means to be an engaged writer, I think about writers who confront the world from some set of principles: Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, communist, or socialist, through an indigenous belief system or some other source of precepts and strictures. Matt Trease is just such an engaged writer,…
Nonfiction Review: McKenzie Watson-Fore Reads Gabriella D’Italia’s Debut Memoir Getting Dressed in the Dark

The crisis that catalyzes Gabriella D’Italia’s debut memoir, Getting Dressed in the Dark: An Artist’s Way Home, is a gruesome separation and divorce, when D’Italia learns that her partner of twenty-two years has been cheating on her with her much-younger coworker and friend. However, Getting Dressed in the Dark is much more than a divorce…