Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction Review: Mia Carroll Reads Zeeva Bukai’s Epistolary Novel The World Between

Zeeva Bukai’s The World Between is a collection of short letters from a woman in an Israeli sanatorium to her husband back in New York. She reflects on the breakdown of their marriage and her early life during the Holocaust. The nameless narrator grew up in Poland until the start of the Second World War,…
Fiction Review: Sayantani Roy Reads Glen Pourciau’s Story Collection Under

Glen Pourciau has a knack for crafting moments where ordinary characters find themselves in strange quandaries. In The Art of Subtext, Charles Baxter tells us that the best stories have characters who “create scenes that in life, in all likelihood, we would avoid.” Pourciau’s characters excel in just that. Simple arguments heat up and turn into…
New Side A Prose Poetry: “A Meditation on Birds and Other Things After Watching It Was Just an Accident” by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

A Meditation on Birds and Other Things After Watching It Was Just an Accident I know very little about Iran, and yet there are familiar crow sounds in the beginning of the movie where cars dart on busy roads and one man digs a dusty grave in the desert. Nothing feels safe there. Crows squawk…
Poetry Review: J. Michael Wahlgren Reads Eric Weiskott’s Collection Cycle of Dreams

In Cycle of Dreams, Eric Weiskott presents this notion of an individual on a quest. It’s a common notion in literature to be on a quest, whether that quest be spiritual or a journey from one physical place to another. The verse in the book is structured and there’s a playfulness and simplicity to Weiskott’s…
“Grief Algebra”: New Side A Flash Fiction by Mileva Anastasiadou

Grief Algebra We sit in silence around a table of four. We’re only three, because someone is missing. His chair is empty and will remain silent until someone visits and sits there, unaware of the value this chair held. We’ll look at them like they’re undefined operation, like they’re savage or sacrilegious and they won’t…
The Future Has Poetry: Three from Arcanum by Daniel Beauregard

a drunkeneye roamsthe hearthwherean idiotsitslike a fishout of water the fire is unlitand the idiot is cold what an idiot! * down by Frog Lakethere’s an old stonethat looks like acat’s head a deflated balloondecrescendo out oftime with raven’shair the bubbles go downby Cat’s Head Lakelooking for valveswith which tospeak a moderate shift insediment yields…
Original Fiction for Flavor Town USA: “Metropolis” by Michelle Bitting

Joan at the Château Élysée, 1929, Hollywood, CA By the time they are ready for me to rehearse on the rooftop, I’ve already eaten two plates of sand dabs smothered in lemon butter sauce and a mountain of croquembouche eclairs. I can’t help it—I’m getting nervous waiting for my turn under the stage lights, and…
New Bad Survivalist Short Fiction: “Small Arousals” by Lily Gareth Cunningham

Every morning I crawled out our kitchen window and photographed my ass next to our street’s latest road sign. This was my full-time job. “NEW: NO parking on Franklin, 10am to 4pm, Wednesday. Street sweeping.” I posted the caption beneath a photo of a sign that read the same, featuring the curve of my right…
Poetry from the Future: “Landlords” by Grace Lynn

Here’s how you inherit the future. You stand here searching for lost parts but only find people rehearsing gravity. They make syllables of promise then rise into air. They are pretty & distant & will remain this way. Will let you down but never remember. If speech heals silence, it’s only in your head. Only…