Author: Heavy Feather

Nonfiction Review: Hollay Ghadery Reads Pamela Mulloy’s Essay Collection Off the Tracks

There are a handful of books I’ve read that truly enchanted me. Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel by Pamela Mulloy is one of them. Even now, weeks after finishing the book, I can recall the momentum: the sway between drugged calm and startled curiosity I experienced…
New Poem for Side A: “Kandinsky” by Sandy Berrgian

Kandinsky I entered a dream worldof color and fireDay and nightgarden and fieldegg and dragonflyFlag and footballThis form a science fiction. Mini-interview with Sandy Berrgian by Rod Roland RR: What can you tell me about this poem? SB: Kandinsky is one of my most favorite artists. I was probably at the Guggenheim. I don’t know…
Short Fiction for Side A: “An Evening Jog by the Lake” by Stacey Lounsberry

An Evening Jog by the Lake A human man with the top of a taxidermized bison head, its breast of fur still fluffed like a winter scarf, pushes a baby stroller just ahead of me. Its wheels bump fist-sized rocks, jarring the carriage; the man’s knuckles flash white like a warning. He stops to watch…
“Placatory Congregation”: A New Haunted Passage by Steve Castro, Christopher Citro, & Dustin Pearson

The music of a wall decaying. Stars. Rivers in windows. Moon low over houses. If we stuck a fork in it, juice would fall over us. Build a play cave, cover it with thick blankets. With a small hand tuck the final flap in. The play cave was unique like our town’s pastor with a…
Three Life Sentences for Bad Survival: Original Poetry by Susan Lewis

From Each her deadlift limitation, to each her accordion need. Wandering towards wonder at the old one-two as if physics could say if not save the day, steal if not seal the deal, stave if not stow the dole drilled from the spoils of this ever spill. Weep if you think worse of anyone than…
Book Excerpt: Six New Clark Coolidge Poems from Radium Out Cold

These poems are a kind of pure poetry that reflects the the writer’s life work of interacting with language. For those who are drawn in, this work can take on an importance that permeates how we think and hear and see and live, complete with an ongoing sense of play and utter joy in the…
Fiction for Side A: “Tell me how it tastes” by Arielle M. DeVito

Tell me how it tastes Mia’s dead ex-wife turns up in the middle of the night, dripping. She’s soggy with the smell of the lakebed and gets stinking mud all over the mat. Mia doesn’t know what to do with her, but she runs a bath that’s probably too hot and sits with her back…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “Dust in the Cupboard” by Leo Alder

I lingered too long by the crematorium and got possessed by a spirit. His family had long since left. He told me they put his urn in the car while they ate at KFC. KFC, he wailed. He spat each letter cold down my spine. They ate at KFC. Can you believe it? He clattered…
Fiction Review: Matt Martinson Reads Emily Greenberg’s Collection of Alternative Facts

Midway through Emily Greenberg’s breakout collection, Alternative Facts, is a story titled “Lost in the Desert of the Real,” which begins with theorist Jean Baudrillard’s description of how images are degraded from being reflections of profound reality to simulacrums of themselves, self-referentiality with no external connection. It is a common enough danger of our media-infested…