Author: Heavy Feather

Five Poems: Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

This Doom I am still learning to die for myself.I can’t unremember a few. And I knowpeople who are enough gravity, whowill look you in the bullseye and say:this is how to stay, this is how to live.But here are their hands, tugging ontothe rainline from their eyes calling Godfrom the other end as if…
Two Poems by Jan Wiezorek

Uphill Uphill disorients us,our gnarly breathing,not knowing howher sentiment loadsher florid face, rotatingunder leaves succumbedto false serenity: Had to putmy dog down, she says—like standing on her head,blood rushing to her face,eyes roiling leaves—hillyfootfalls, pausing, no treescomfort her, no words, noquiet, upside lying down.I’m trying not to cry, to bestrong for her; her breathsclimbing (penumbral)…
Two Poems by John Gallaher

A Private Language In the parking lot this afternoon, a woman (mid-60s?) walked downthe row, got into a silver Ford sedan parked next to me,and sat there a bit like she’s really thinking, like she’s contemplatingexistence, working on her thousand-yard stare, as I was loadingmy groceries. Then she got back out, went down a couple…
Fiction Review: Ben Tripp Reads Tom Comitta’s Novel The Nature Book

Some will be familiar with the style of experimental writing found between these covers. “This novel contains no words of my own,” the author ominously portends in the book’s short, explanatory preface. “I have gathered nature descriptions from over three hundred novels and arranged them into a single book.” The aesthetic of collage, or, more…
“Must there be sacrifice?”: Claire Polders Reads Jennifer Lang’s Memoir-in-Miniature Places We Left Behind

Peripatetic As a nomad, I’m drawn to international stories about displacement. My life drastically changed when my husband and I lost our Parisian home in the winter of 2019 and began traveling around the world. I cannot always identify why my wandering existence is as challenging as it is rewarding, so I seek out authors…
Poetry: “God Responds [to the Proust Questionnaire]” by Jubi Arriola-Headley

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals [their] true nature. —Vanity Fair Where the typical journalistic interview tailors questions to the particular qualities of a subject, the Proust questionnaire’s unchanging…
Haunted Passages Flash Fiction: “That Year in the Valley” by Andrew Bertaina

I hated everything that year we lived in the valley. The small house with moss-covered shingles, the way the mice scurried beneath the floorboards at night, and the way the rain fell in sheets every time we put clothes on the line, such that my memories always include damp jeans. Mornings, I’d wake to the…
Nonfiction Review: Karin Falcone Krieger Reads Kristina Marie Darling’s Essay Collection Look to Your Left

Prolific author and champion of experiment Kristina Marie Darling reveals a thriving culture of feminist poetics in this recent collection of critical essays, as well as using the lyric essay to expose the dark side of sexism in academic circles. In a spare 140 pages, this collection has many characteristics of a conventional academic text.…
“Our Flaws Can Define Our Growth”: An Interview with Jay Halsey by Gina Tron

Jay Halsey’s poems and prose have been published in several online and print journals and nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. He was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, and has lived on the Colorado Front Range for the past seventeen years. His photography has been used as cover art for poetry collections and…