Author: Heavy Feather

“Some Kind of Monster”: Stephen Meisel Reads Dave Fitzgerald’s Novel Troll

The trashed halls of pop culture are littered with Slenderman copypastas taken to horrific conclusions and jokes turned into career-threatening scandals. Yes, it’s true. These days, we have a lot of trouble figuring out just how seriously we should take anything—anything at all. Enter Dave Fitzgerald’s Troll, an encyclopedia of cringe, the novel no one…
“Art is never just”: Peter Valente on Touching the Art, a memoir by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

In Touching the Art, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore examines her complex relationship with her grandmother, an abstract artist from Baltimore, and the ways in which she impacted her own ideas about what it meant to be an artist; in doing so, she examines the legacy of racism in Baltimore, her own coming out as a queer…
Side A Prose Poetry: “Another Pirate Story” by Brad Rose

Another Pirate Story At the pentagon, the holiday spirit is in full swing. Cannibalism tends to bring people together. Fortunately, I’m in touch with myself, although like opposable thumbs, I don’t take it personally. This year, Satan is doing my income taxes. He’s a likable enough guy, although he says he finds it too dark…
Flavor Town USA Short Story: “A Juicy Soul” by Coleman Bigelow

As I prepare to enter the icy river, my mind wanders to that slice of meat lovers I’ve left behind. I’m regretting my restraint. Not eating all of my “last supper” now seems like an unnecessary sacrifice. What’s the point of being born again if you don’t go out with a gulp? The first time…
Poetry from The Future: “Flood Warning” by Constance Clark

It is incredibly sad Rainwater sits on top of concave dirtdressed in a ripples of amusement Steel raindrops crushed cattails at pondsideand made them learn to swim last night Nowhere Sunna, or Khepri,Amaterasu, or Ra to blot the earth The glistening fern bow, soaked,spilling stardust guts We stare with no replystanding in purple rubber boots…
The Future Has Poetry: “The Year of the Buzzard” by Bray McDonald

It was the Year of the Buzzard, and everything was dying not to die.The last of the clinging leaves had fallen,and the trees were stark with despair.The sky could only croak at dawn.Its throat was clogged, and its eyes itchedwith the dusty and rusty particlesthat rained across the horizon, and bloated the suninto a stunted…
Flavor Town USA Fiction: “Definition: Love” by Winslow Schmelling

/ləv/ n.1 Origin: gas station hotdog “Remember how the attendant gave the rest of them to us for free? He hesitated for that heavy moment after we asked for two of them. I swear I saw his eyes glaze. Visions. PTSD. Memories of war. ‘You can just have them,’ he said, placing each dynamite stick into…
Side A Poem: “Anti-Ars Poetica” by Jonathan Memmert

Anti-Ars Poetica There is no poetry in a shrapnel wound that refuses to heal … No enjambment in a lifelong amputation / No metaphor inside the guns aimed & trigger cocked No simile flies from the aerial carpet bombings No alliteration as tank tracks cross borderlines No allegory hidden in a drone’s surveillance Mines laid…
“Style & Symptom”: K Hank Jost Reviews Jinnwoo’s Novella POLO

Between two burning fields, in a dying industrial village, a child’s sprint toward a coming-of-age is about to be chopped at the knees. The development of our unnamed, laconic narrator, alongside his soon-to-be ex-best friend, has fallen into the hands of a rotating gaggle of older boys. These wayward teenagers, engaging in self-harm, early drug…