Author: Heavy Feather

New Poetry by Cloe Watson: “Mothers”

Remember when the sky fell below our feet,time wasting at the fringes? It became the cracks we stepped on in fear and joy, slipperyin their changing. Remember the clouds, love? How they became our stepping stoneswhen we had to go separate ways, the tall hill between our homes steep with longingand real monsters. As the…
Haunted Passages Fiction: “My Acting Years” by James Pate

My acting years grew new things in me. They gave me unfamiliar words to work my mouth around with each incoming script. They lent me names through which I could expose the more fleeting instances of myself. That I was often anonymous-seeming and lacking in talent only boded well for me. If most people are…
Two Poems from The Future: William Ross

Memo to Agency: CLEAR THE DECKS _ Run desire metrics on thisnew thanato-tourism and ping me back asap _ Scramble the screen scrapers & launch theweb crawlers now _ Get me intel on any brand lift on social _ If this has legs, we’ll pry open themouths of every dead one ferrying the Styx, reach …
“Paying Attention: A Review of Lilith Walks by Susan M. Schultz” by Karin Falcone Krieger

The premise is simple: a series of short vignettes about interesting encounters while out on walks with the dog. The dog is Lilith and she is the driving force of these small fables written by her human, Susan M. Schultz. Lilith Walks is a three-year journey through a suburban neighborhood on O’ahu, Hawaii through the…
Interview with Parker Young, Author of Cheap Therapist Says You’re Insane, by Sam Heaps

Cheap Therapist Says You’re Insane, out now from Future Tense Books, is the rare short story collection that provides shockingly robust pleasure from the beginning to the end, the kind can only exist in the shadow of deep discomfort. This book is all killer, no filler. Young’s prose, without ever losing its root in the…
Poetry by Lisa Zerkle: “I’m Stopped by the Black Pearl of Her”

An elegant weapon, she’s glossy,ballistic. Her legs, articulated.But it’s the shine I notice. Light glintsoff carapace though she’s tangled ina sticky mess, a catchall of deadleaves and insects I take for cobwebnear a potted shrub. The hydrangeathat has bloomed and faded though the daysstill blaze and rattlesnaking of cicadasrises from the oaks. Her abdomen’sa precise…
An Excerpt from Danny Joseph’s Shortish Novel Danny the Ambulance

Danny the Ambulance is a novel about a man who walks into a bar and over the course of the night realizes everyone in the bar is named Danny. The Jury Room feels like a long thin unendurable shack and the rain pouring down overtop has the cadence and impact of tiny hammers falling on…
Poetry for Haunted Passages: Two Fassbinder Tapes by LM Rivera

This is a fragment from a forthcoming book (THE RED ABSURD). The section is THE FASSBINDER TAPES. TAPEONE He swore to all the world and to himself that he would remain decent. And as long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money, which was a moment he had…
“A frame for the raw moment”: Reflexes on Sarah Rosenthal’s Lizard by Alex Rieser

There is something powerful about newness, when you first hold the book in your hands, its glossy cover and particular weight. Release parties, the words of praise on the back, honest or not. Newness is a vulnerable state. The artist has sent it onto the world and the world has yet to decide if it…