Author: Heavy Feather

“Dear Society, It’s Not Just a Phase”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Lol Tolhurst’s Historical Memoir Goth

Recently, Entertainment Weekly released a list of the 22 “most important goths in pop culture.” Of course the list included perennial favorites like The Craft’s Nancy Downs, NCIS’ Abby Sciuto, and South Park’s goth kids. It also included some surprises like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Lisbeth Salander and Adventure Time’s Marceline. Nonetheless, the…
Fiction Review: Alex DiFrancesco Reads Tobias Caroll’s Novel In the Sight

While In the Sight, Tobias Carroll’s third novel, is definitely a road novel of a dark America, it’s also a novel with a hook. The main character, Farrier, sells a brain-hacking drug that was created by him and other members of a secret society that’s now defunct. The disintegration of this secret society remains largely…
Poetry Review: G.H. Mosson Reads Hafiz’s Little Book of Life

The 14th century Persian poet Hafez, also spelled in English Hafiz, is one of Iran’s most cherished poets, a Sufi poet working within Islamic culture much like the mystical Sufi poet Rumi. Hafez lived in the city of Shiraz, where he was renowned as a professional reciter of the Koran from memory as well as…
Side A Poem: “Wandering” by Peter Leight

Wandering (Sailing) It’s a small boata child among boatsit only takes a second to walkfrom the front of the boatto the back and backagain under slender stringsof smoke rising over the boatover the water spreadingash on the waterholding onto the ropesto keep them from flappingor lifting sheets of smokethat soften without accumulatingor dissolving while the…
New for Haunted Passages: Four Microfictions by Salvatore Difalco

Say Cheese Let’s get this party started, Jack. Got no time to Mickey Mouse around the house tonight. Pirates and pickpockets are on their way. A fun bunch, as you’ll see. Try my special punch, I made it from an ancient Sumerian recipe, it’ll crack your teeth and give you wheels. Meantime I’ll spin some…
“Coupledom, Divorce, and Time’s Fluidity”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Eugene Lim’s Novel Fog & Car

Rife with love, melancholia, grief, and a supernatural hint, Eugene Lim’s debut novel Fog & Car is a psychological mindbender with the potential to reshape and redefine fiction. It follow Jim Fog, who after a divorce finds himself marooned in a small Midwestern town. Meanwhile, his ex, Sarah Car, seems to skip any regret or…
New Haunted Passages Essay: “giving yrself flowers: an act of love” by Erick Sáenz

“That’s what experience for human is: an amplification and intensification of our sense of ourselves amidst other presences in the world”—Lyn Hejinian // every time we leave the apartment i tend to the camellia bush down the street, varying pink hues smashed against the concrete the streets are unkempt with them // the botanical gardencoffees…
Original Short Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Saponified” by Taylor Hebert

So far, the honeymoon had been okay, but she couldn’t rid her mouth of the taste of soap. She had been brushing her teeth three times a day. Only breathing deeply could cleanse her palate—but with the next taste of anything, it was as if she had been gnawing on a golden bar of Dial.…
Haunted Passages Poem: “In the Dark” by David Cazden

Doctors gaze at Mom’s CAT scanthe way astronomers lookbetween galaxies.For space is mostly darklike our old staircasewhere I’d turnby the dim-lit landing,angling to the last steppast my brother’s closed door.Once he didn’t make the turn,winding up on the roof―legs over guttersamong boughsswaying like drunken angels.The last day I see Momin the memory wardshe has forgotten…