Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Matt Martinson Reads M.J. Nicholls’ Collection Violent Solutions to Popular Problems

Remember learning about the so-called death of the author, that brief moment where, in the world of literature, authorial biography—to say nothing of intent—did not matter in the least? If I’m being honest, I sometimes find myself missing the playfulness of the postmodern old guard, which feels as if it has been entirely replaced with…
Paul Ilechko: Three Poems for Bad Survivalist

Truck Stop The sky was a grid of varying colorsnone of which were visible to the naked eyebut the man vaping in the cab of an F-150knew instinctively that he was parkedbelow a quadrant of the darkest magentathe handle clicked as a door swung openand a body hauled itselfinto the passenger seattattoos glowing fluorescent under…
“the witness moves the wind through herself”: Michael Collins Reads Joy Manesiotis’ Poetry Collection Revoke

Beginning Revoke, the third collection from Joy Manesiotis, we quickly realize that this book’s making is an integral, considered part of our experience. Two veil-like pages demarcate our entry and exit from the space of lyric ritual into which we are invited. Within, several poems are set in white letters on black pages, seemingly in…
“A Novel for a New America”: Nicole Yurcaba Reads Daniel Lefferts’ Novel Ways and Means

In 2016, Alistair McCabe’s dreams of a fantasy banking job have fizzled. His paramours, an older gay couple named Mark and Elijah, are facing a breakup due to financial and emotional fizzles. America—rife with Donald Trump’s fiery, and at many times nonsensical, rantings—teeters toward a breaking point. Meanwhile, Alistair finds himself running for his life…
Fiction Review: Dave Karp Reads Stacey Levine’s Novel Mice 1961

Stacey Levine has always been the bard of the marginal, the writer with the genius to destabilize a story with askew language and events. Her novels are also wince-inducingly funny, and Mice 1961, her first since Frances Johnson, is no exception. The new novel is set in an odd, artificial 1960s Florida, a confection made…
“RIPE”: An Excerpt from Ross McMeekin’s Short Story Collection Below the Falls

Two climbers in the North Cascades risk their friendship and lives ascending a frozen waterfall. The girlfriend of a famous comedian in Greenwich Village must decide whether she wants to raise a child in the spotlight of fame. A mysterious Bird of Paradise makes daily overtures to an elderly widow in the frigid Midwest. A…
New for Side A: Three Poems from WHAT by Robert Kocik

proto-anything Sunrise light day sunset night dark. Sharpness of shape-less white against blue. Unbearability of ticking. Grievance blight, life changing quiet, the way of thingswith/out us. Another antler chandelier. Sculptor’s field of marvels overgrown. Blooms of jellyfishclogging aircraft carrier’s cooling system. Nail polish next to erythromycin. ‘Composting’… a wordfor earth’s reaction to our works our…
Original Haunted Passages Short Story: “The Little List of Garden Monsters” by Jordan Dilley

In the garden, the monsters bloom. Stems and vines trendil over and under, through and back, vibrating to the rhythm of a dance that has no rules. There are no plaques here, no little hand-painted signs segregating herbs from flowers from vegetables. Anonymous to others, but we know their names. Martha has a little list.…
Poetry by Sarah Fawn Montgomery: “Wading”

Father taught me craftwas the way to catch fish from a lureminnow shining. Hope was a fool’s lesson.Skill was flesh hung from a hook, casteasily into indifferent water. I pulled bodies breathlessfrom safety to shore, watched rainbows thrashat my muddied boots. Flaking flesh from brittlebone I feasted when full. Sometimes I tossed bodiesback into the…