Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry for Side A: “Sophie” by Sherice Kong

Sophie We sit and wait fora picture that is taking its time to load. Our whole summershed like blood. The air was silked with cicadas and all the almost adults weretrembling in the hands to become someone important. I thought of how I could take my new licenseand drive straight across my life’s small, shiny…
Writing from the Future: “The Lemon Game” by Brittany Redd

You are a regular person just trying to survive in a world where life only ever gives you lemons. Sometimes, you get a lot of lemons; sometimes only a few. It is up to you to decide what you do with them. You can make lemonade. You can make something else if you want. Whatever you try to…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Jesi Bender’s New Novel Child of Light

“All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s probably safe to presume that anyone reading this site with any regularity knows this line by heart. As the first of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, it sits comfortably close to the top of the ranks for most famous first lines in…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “Galaxy” by Diane Zinna

My mom once told me, “You’re not pretty—you know that, right?” When I asked her through stinging tears why she would say that, she said, “Well, you have a horse face.” I was twelve. She also taught me the names of all the constellations. On the nights my stepfather filled the house with liquor and…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages: Emma Galloway Stephens

The Devil Beats His Wife When the devil beats his wife,rain and sunshine fall together. Hell’s housewife knows her husband’s daysare few—the rain falls rain on sun on rain. The devil’s a mobster, a debt collector—his wife waxes hell’s nine floors, washes its sooty windows.It’s a house of slamming doors. But slowly she learns not…
Fiction for Haunted Passages: “A Plague of Grackles” by Adam Camiolo

It’ll happen slowly at first. He’ll come home a little early, make the turn onto their block, and he’ll see her, his wife, standing on the grass, barefoot, back turned towards the street, staring at the tree full of chirping birds. He may get out of his car, point to one and say, “honey, look…
Side A Flash Fiction: “Side Jobs Wanted” by Mario Moussa

Side Jobs Wanted I’m looking for side jobs. If you need a pet sitter or a house sitter while you’re away. I’ll sit with your plants if they need company. I’ll talk to them if they like talking. Or a babysitter—you want to go away and have me sit and talk with your baby? Sounds…
Side A Poetry: “WHAT IF THE INSTAGRAM WELLNESS GIRLIES ARE RIGHT” by Anna Boughtwood

WHAT IF THE INSTAGRAM WELLNESS GIRLIES ARE RIGHT Follow her Follow her Luteal Phase Sweet Potato Brownie recipe and Pilates Princess Flat Abs Routine and raw milk truther vlogs andMake America Healthy Again™-approved coffee enema technique and Slavic Girl Glowing Skin Whole Foods Shopping List and hormone balancing journey andnon-toxic sugar-free glow up diary andmold detox…
Short Story for Side A: “Fragments of One or the Other” by Molly Andrea-Ryan

Fragments of One or the Other It’s Tuesday, which means it’s the day that I spend the afternoon with my niece. I watch her, that’s what her mother would say, although that sounds a little too punitive to me, makes her sound a little too puny, one or the other. Suggests a power imbalance which…