Author: Heavy Feather

Fiction for Bad Survivalist: “The Cheese Wheel Race” by Will Musgrove

Shirtless, you stare down the steep, grassy hill. At the bottom, men dressed as referees wait to catch you and the other competitors. Swinging the cheese wheel between bent knees, the mayor practices his launch. You scan the crowd for your personal trainer Terry. All week, he had you rolling and tumbling. He’d sneak up…
“Shrouded by death & isolation is a promise / a future”: Haunted Passages Poetry by Brekken Carns

I. Wanted: the dead image of her human face — a sheep butchered on the dewy grass tongue dangling below its pale soft nose newborn-pink eyes frozen wild in terror (terror such a wild thing) as if in formalin the back right leg torn clean off, jagged muscles steaming and gone ripped from socket a…
“A Front-row Seat at the Horror Show”: Ann Leamon Reviews Lyudmyla Khersonska’s Poetry Collection Today Is a Different War

One night you go to bed in your ordinary life, only to awaken transformed. Such a transformation occurred in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Lyudmyla Khershonska’s wrenching, beautiful book of poems, Today Is a Different War, captures the sensation of being a citizen of a developed country on the doorstep of Europe only to…
“Openings”: William Lessard Interviews Adeena Karasick & Warren Lehrer

Adeena Karasick is a Canadian poet based in New York. She is also a media artist, cultural theorist, and author of 14 books. Her most recent books include Ærotomania: The Book of Lumenations (Lavender Ink, 2023) and Massaging the Medium: 7 Pechakuchas (The Institute of General Semantics Press, 2022), which was shortlisted for Outstanding Book…
Three Poems by Rushing Pittman

For a long time I’m unhappy then I’m fine … I’m fuller than any moon.I’m made of cobalt hearts.I’m everything inside the multitude of another.Here I am inside my kitchen peeling an apple.The apple takes up the entire room.Wonderful living with you and seeing you.No, I let you sleep.Or why we love or what love…
Original Side A Short Story: “Fresh Start” by Jane Snyder

Fresh Start When the car broke down, Doug said it was the fan belt. It wasn’t a bad place to be, if it had to happen, close to a plasma center and a Union Gospel Mission. We’ll give plasma now, he said, then we’ll go to the Mission. Dakota asked why, if we’re getting…
A Haunted Passages Poem: “The Red Kickball” by Jason Melvin

We thought it’d be funnot waiting for nightfallsticky summer afternoon séancesun high up in the skyeight of us just kissing the teen yearshanging out on my back porchalways in search of a thrill and a scare We circled up discussed next movesWhen all four grandparents and your fatherare dead by time you’re eleventhere are plenty…
Poetry Review: Josh Nicolaisen Reads Fighting Is Like a Wife by Eloisa Amezcua

In her second full-length collection, Fighting Is Like a Wife, Eloisa Amezcua delivers a shockingly palpable recounting of the tragic relationship between boxer “Schoolboy” Bobby Chacon and his first wife, Valorie Ginn. The book shares its title with a 1983 Sports Illustrated article, which first highlights Chacon’s rise to fame and its effects on their…
Poetry Review: Zachary Kinsella Reads Caryl Pagel’s Free Clean Fill Dirt

Resonating with metaphysical awareness, humor, and clarity, Caryl Pagel’s Free Clean Fill Dirt is gracefully unglamorous in its foreboding, tactile verse that seeks to enumerate the material and moral decline of our planet. Pagel roots her eco-poetics in what she names “Ordinary Strata,” which service ekphrastic responses to familiar places that are in some form…