Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Ashley Honeysett Reads Jillian Danback-McGhan’s Collection Midwatch

One of the stories in Jillian Danback-McGhan’s collection of short fiction, Midwatch, is set in the Gulf of Aden, where American troops are boarding fishing vessels, trying to catch pirates by searching for weapons and other evidence of illicit activity. Did you know the U.S. Navy did that? Any military veteran could casually talk about…
The Future Has Poetry: “How I Tell You I Love You When All Hope Is Lost” by Jeneva Stone

Displaced air arrives by force as the metro rushes the station. Your hand pressed to the small of my back and dim lights up my spine brighten north. Greens tied with a pink ribbon. Narrative hallway with endless doors without a knob or dial. Breath visible and there! grace notes ensue. greens tied with a…
New Side A Short Fiction: “Clownskin” by Brent Joseph Johnson

Clownskin One afternoon the sky above us and the sky to the side of us gathered together into a strange and terrifying pattern. So we stopped what we were doing and pointed at it. Even our power-walkers and mail-carriers, even our demons and sasquatches, even our own actual clowns pointed in perplexity. “Holy shit,” we…
Side A Poem: “Middle Pain” by Naomi Bess Leimsider

Middle Pain Up against the faceless ghost clock again. Time is of the essence. Waiting for the one-sided middle pinch, that sets it all in motion. Cycle in. Cycle out. So, so smooth the way it sheds and grows. How it all goes. The inner mechanism slows and shifts. Only able to harness stillness, can’t…
“The Dance of Self-Reclamation”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Vincent Czyz’s Novel Sun Eye Moon Eye

At first glance, Vincent Czyz’s Sun Eye Moon Eye might seem like another daunting 500+ page novel. Nonetheless, we would do well to not only not pass judgment on this because of its cover (which is actually quite gorgeous and thought-provoking), but we should not turn away because we fear a lengthy read. Sun Eye…
Fiction for the Friggatriskaidekaphobic: “Immortal” by Stefan Kiesbye

On evenings she couldn’t sleep, she walked up the carpeted stairs and knocked on my door. Under the down comforter, my bony hips squeezed between her thighs, we listened to her husband’s snoring. Emily was richly layered and comfortable and her neck smelled of dark spices. When she was in a hurry, she knelt in…
“All Theory Is Gray”: Matt Martinson Reads Ed Simon’s Devil’s Contract and Confirms Faust and Mephistopheles Are Still with Us

The Faustian bargain, whether in the arts or reality, is alive and well in the twenty-first century. Even in our secular age, we, too, sell our souls for trivial things—e.g., buying an unneeded phone while trying not to think of the slave labor and economic destruction wrought in the collection of its components—or to evil…
“Hot Dog Exclusivity”: New Short Fiction for Flavor Town USA by Avery Gregurich

The people of Icon are celebrating their independence just as they have for centuries: with a contest of eaters. It’s hot throughout Icon. The national flags wave upside down on poles outside the pods of some of the people tuning in on their HomeScreens to watch the eaters. Most of those people actually hunger to…
Dan Alter: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

[When didn’t I know] When didn’t I know about the ashes, the attack dogs. We breathed itin & out like gray moths beating on smudged glass. Numberscheaply inked in the butcher’s arm who sliced kosher beeffor my father. The war ended, grass grew back over pits outside Kiev. Marcu walked toward Harry with his arms…