Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Chapbook Review: Jess Chua Reads Root Rot by Rhienna Renée Guedry

Root Rot, Rhienna Renée Guedry’s debut chapbook, piqued my curiosity for several reasons. For as long as I remember, I’ve loved nature and the environment. I also enjoy examining the darker side of life and the psyche, and how we cope when processing experiences like loss and grief. Furthermore, the poems were written on or…
Sandra Marchetti: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

Lake at Dusk for GMH He said it shonelike shook foil.It was that butadd gas rainingthen light a match,or plug it in.It was as if youthrew live coilsbeneath, a sparkingroil the kayakssliced throughto reach the draping shore. Crustacean Like pinball flippers or the barin a coin pusher game, redlegs scuttle to the rock’s edgewhere my…
New Side A Flash Fiction: “Don’t Look at the New Moon Through Glass” by Alison L. Fraser

Don’t Look at the New Moon Through Glass I put her superstitions away for later, when she had proven herself to be a ghost. Hand outstretched towards me, obscenities dripped from her fingers, her brain encased in cancer, her frontal lobe an abyss of dead matter, she told me not to leave her with that…
A “Test” for Side A: Visual Poetry by Valen Arcelo

Mini-interview with Valen Arcelo HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? VA: One of the turning points that has shaped me as a writer was discovering the novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and the poem “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” by E. E. Cummings. Honestly, the first time I saw these…
Poetry Review: Jeffrey Kahrs Reads Amelia Rosselli’s Epic The Dragonfly

By any measure The Dragonfly is an extraordinary work of a young poet stretching the language between meaning and the paradoxical, and in turn engaging in an often-Manichean battle to define the ethical and moral. Sailing into the wind of the era of existentialism, the tacking and lurching of Amelia Rosselli’s poems reflects her singular…
Nonfiction Review: Eric Aldrich Reads Marcia Aldrich’s Essay Collection Edge

I’m reading Marcia Aldrich’s essay collection, Edge, when I get a text from a friend who is worried that he’s found bones belonging to a deer he knows. Edge is largely, though not exclusively, a book about deer, and I receive my friend’s message at the same moment I’m reading an essay in which Aldrich…
Adam Day: Five Poems from Midnight’s Talking Lion and the Wedding Fire

Chile example 1973—Zurita arrested and held in ship’s cargo hold; process-experience under witnessing. He tried to disappear his eyes with acid, but failed. “Instead he created a document: chapter twentieth century having disfigured its face. Might not be quite right. Then, a photo of its bandaged cheek with the text below, EGO SUM, and: ‘My…
“Dol-lim Ja Imprints”: A Poem by Georgia San Li

Characters for the Next Generations One generation of heirloom tomatoes divides their eggs, bubbling with blisters, bloody broken stems in the end. How many precious pigeon-red rubies will man flood with fires and vengeance of war in the end? Who were the three African women in tangerine silks and golden slippers, rerouted at Charles De…
Haunted Passages: “Transistor Radio,” an irreal autofiction by Peter Cherches

I found an old transistor radio on the street. It looked like the kinds I had when I was a kid. A transistor radio became an essential kid accessory when Beatlemania hit. One Saturday night back then I was going through the stations and I heard this guy doing a kind of stand-up act at…