Author: Heavy Feather

Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Why Not the Cherry Tree” by Matthew James Friday

with its dark web of branchesoffering galaxies of darkening orbs. At Idiot’s Grace Farm – Pick Your Ownmy middle-school nephew proudlyconquers ladders and black hole branchesone star at a time. I stand below, an Odin steadying the ladder,belly-bucket layering with half-heartedlabors, one eye on him, the otheron cherries bouncing below. We consume half the universein…
Flavor Town USA Comic: “Hand, Foot & Mouth” by KC Councilor

KC Councilor is a trans cartoonist and professor who draws memoir comics and occasionally academic ones. You can see more of his work at kccouncilor.com.
Poetry by Alexandra Burack: “Any Second Chance of a Town”

We small-town dead crabgrass over the cracked bluewalls of the grange, where the post-mistress deliversdead letters beaming with flora of flourishing landsin the upper-right corner. Our young always meantto go there, those parks and strip malls outstretchedbeyond the frames our portraits wilt inside. If onlyvo-ag folk knew crops the way nanas knew suffering,that perfect loam…
Poetry Review: Elizabeth Zuba Reads Noelle Kocot’s Collection Ascent of the Mothers

A slim volume of 64 pages, Noelle Kocot’s newest collection Ascent of the Mothers volatizes the human body and blows it off into the winds of nowhere and always. If you’re familiar with Kocot’s work you already know they are a master of sifting out the right loose cluster of words to briefly summon, and…
Nonfiction Review: Lily Blackburn Reads A. V. Marraccini’s Essay We the Parasites

In We the Parasites, a five-part essay/memoir, A. V. Marraccini celebrates and critiques the acute, embodied experience of dedicating one’s life to admiring and critiquing art; the way we move through, haunt, and are haunted by the art that won’t leave us. But rather than locate this experience as solely intellectual, in the delivery of…
Fiction Review: Oli Peters Reads Lauren Cook’s Field Guide Sex Goblin

Oftentimes, Sex Goblin feels like a lustrous alternative to the doomscroll. Non-narrative vignettes—which all utilize an “I” that assumes different lives and situations in each “story”—are transitioned between with short lines that read both like brilliant tweets (“We don’t have to ride or die we can just chill”) and like aphorisms (“The human brain didn’t…
“Bones Blush Brilliant in the Soft Light”: A Conversation with Virgil Suárez

It’s a couple of months to poetry month as I write this. Back when I was a kid poet reading in secret in my bedroom or, later on, rocking it on the Lower East Side, poetry didn’t have a month. Or, if it did, I didn’t know about it. It would have seemed silly to…
Fiction Review: Andrew Farkas Reads Michael Czyzniejewksi’s Collection The Amnesiac in the Maze

According to T.S. Eliot, we supposedly read “many books because we can’t know enough people.” Having experienced (and enjoyed) Michael Czyzniejewski’s stories over the years, I’ve always believed Czyzniejewski agrees with Eliot. After reading his most recent collection, The Amnesiac in the Maze, I no longer need to believe; I know. I think Czyzniejewski would…
Poetry Review: Carole Mertz Reads Ida Börjel’s Collection Ma

Swedish Ida Börjel, like the Scandinavian author Inger Christensen, models her collection on abecedary for her striking 2014 volume. Ma, in its 2023 first English edition, however, resembles the Danish author’s compendium only in its structural format. Unlike Christensen, Börjel’s work is a dark, suffering, and probing account that frequently draws on war, deprivation, and…