Author: Heavy Feather

Side A Poetry: “The Strategy of Tension” by Christopher Blackman

The Strategy of Tension At a bar, lobsters millin the corner claw machine,waiting to be pulledfrom their situation,from brine into boilfilling the room with the smellof displaced sea, pluckedfrom bedrooms to be usedin amusements, consumedby men in cargo shorts.Not to quote Dostoevsky,but this might be our greatest sin:destroying and betraying ourselvesfor nothing. Friends,I don’t need…
Short Story for Bad Survivalist: “Clashing Perspectives” by Kim Farleigh

Waiting on the top of a hill to catch a bus to Agra, we saw vehicles below fleeing from traffic lights. Then: deceleration, swerving, horns bleating, collisions narrowly avoided, vehicles creeping around something on the road fifty meters from the lights. Seconds later, another metal spine started accumulating behind the lights. Unsuspecting vertebrae, stretching on…
Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Wes Blake’s Novella-in-Flash Pineville Trace

In Pineville Trace, Wes Blake tells the story of Frank Russet, a former revival preacher who has escaped from a minimum-security prison in Kentucky, where he was being held as a con artist. As Frank and his feline companion named Buffalo journey west to freedom, Blake paints a triptych of the escapist—his newly forged existence…
Fiction Review: Aidan Loevlie Reads C.H. Hooks’ Second Novel Can’t Shake the Dust

With Can’t Shake the Dust, C.H. Hooks further demonstrates his dexterity with symbolism and paradox. His second novel examines fate and trauma through one family’s relationship to the dirt track. The story is narrated by 14-year-old “Little” Billy Lemon, his father “Wild” Bill, and his mother Nanny. From the first sentence, Little’s mind is on his…
Side A Fiction: “Stoneware” by Katie Coleman

Stoneware We were packing boxes in the kitchen after a nice day: chimichangas, supermarket beer, loving talk. I thought I might as well pack the lobster bowls with the bedding, because we’d be inviting teachers for dinner in Thailand. My boyfriend’s certain to make a good teaching assistant. That picture of him in his camp…
Sunday Comix: “Cosmos” by Gary Barwin

Gary Barwin is a writer, multimedia artist, and musician, the author of 33 books including, recently, the author of Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984 (Assembly Press), Ovaryman (a play written with Tom Prime, published in Dead Code and other dramatic entertainments, Anti-Oedipus Press), and The Fabulous Op (with Gregory Betts,…
Comics Review: Jason Teal Reads Olivier Schrauwen’s Graphic Novel about His Cousin Thibault’s Sunday

How many Sundays did it take me to finally write about the new graphic novel from Olivier Schrauwen, Sunday? Get up ah. According to the calendar, this is my 21st Sunday with the book, and I think that in itself deserves some kind of award: like Olivier’s cousin Thibault I have not traveled very far…
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…