Author: Heavy Feather

  • “What the body will say when you’re dead”: A New Side A Poem by Jeff King

    “What the body will say when you’re dead”: A New Side A Poem by Jeff King

    What the body will say when you’re dead He swallowed pills   abilify   aristada   atenolol   benzodiazepine   buspar  chantix   divalproex sodium   lithium   paxil  warfarin   zoloft   zyprexa   for thoughts   that didn’t make sense  for fixing a body He lived   smoking a cigarette   on the porch   in the street   in a portrait with ferns   a portrait of placid water   …

  • “Like a knight of stone who smiles”: On Robert Desnos’ Poetry Collection Night of Loveless Nights by Peter Valente

    “Like a knight of stone who smiles”: On Robert Desnos’ Poetry Collection Night of Loveless Nights by Peter Valente

    I first became aware of Robert Desnos’ poetry, as well as many of the works of the surrealists, in The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster. The poem that was central to me in that volume was “No, Love Is Not Dead,” translated by Bill Zavatsky, with that memorable…

  • Poetry Review: Sarah Sarai Reads Harsh Realm by Daniel Nester

    Poetry Review: Sarah Sarai Reads Harsh Realm by Daniel Nester

    A poetic navigation through the Nineties, Daniel Nester’s Harsh Realm is a palooza of a collection, nimble of word and beautifully designed. Its poems reveal the moving parts of someone who, it would seem, doesn’t cease movement of geography or vision. While many of the poems are reflective, romantic, revelatory, you know, poemy, the opener, “My…

  • “One Punch”: A Haunted Passages Prose Poem by John Wall Barger

    “One Punch”: A Haunted Passages Prose Poem by John Wall Barger

    Either he dies or I die.—Duk-Koo Kim, before his 1982 world championship boxing match with Ray Boom Boom Mancini I. The boxer Duk-Koo Kim grew up poor in Kojin, a fishing village east of Seoul. Whenever he asked for money his mother walloped him. His mother married four times. At fourteen he moved to Seoul,…

  • “Story”: Side A Prose Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

    “Story”: Side A Prose Poetry by Wendy Taylor Carlisle

    Story I say I don’t want to tell my story but it’s all I want to talk about. The husbands, lovers, one-night-stands, the sweet weekend-artists, I have to rehash them, have to describe that room in Antwerp that looked out on the Zoo—red walls and an hourly rate, across the place from where the railway…

  • Haunted Passages: Three Poems by Rita Mookerjee

    Haunted Passages: Three Poems by Rita Mookerjee

    Pyre The ghost vibrates with the furyof someone who was flayed alivebut I like to pretend his death wasdignified like the silent drop ofa tiger lily petal no witnesses noscreams when he is awake henever stops working relentlessand viscous like mercury and herises from a soft grave to chop uphickory logs even though it takeshours…

  • Andrew C. Wenaus Discusses The Supply Chain with Aaron Schneider

    Andrew C. Wenaus Discusses The Supply Chain with Aaron Schneider

    Aaron Schneider is a queer settler living in London, Ontario. He is the Founding Editor at The /tƐmz/ Review, the Publisher at the chapbook press 845 Press, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing Studies at Western University. His stories have appeared in The Danforth Review, Filling Station, The Ex-Puritan, Hamilton Arts and…

  • Fiction Review: Ben Lewellyn-Taylor Reads Emma Cline’s Novel The Guest

    Fiction Review: Ben Lewellyn-Taylor Reads Emma Cline’s Novel The Guest

    Alex, the young woman at the center of Emma Cline’s second novel, The Guest, spends a day at the beach among the wealthy residents on the East End of Long Island, appearing like she belongs. She’s staying with Simon, a man in his fifties, who has invited Alex to his house—with its high ceilings and…

  • Flavor Town USA Poetry: “How We Make Do” by Ginger Ayla

    Flavor Town USA Poetry: “How We Make Do” by Ginger Ayla

    My grandma said in the Depression they ate specks of marrow from the bone, in the Depression they’d wear out every man-made material to deterioration, so determined they were to love things to death. I am familiar with the economics of diminishing, have added more until it became less, squandered like backs and necks of…