Author: Heavy Feather

Haunted Passages Nonfiction: “Ghost Beach” by Asha Dore

Every Friday after Grief Group, Jen took me on blind dates. The first two dates had been a boring bust, watching dudes light up bowls of bad weed in their parents’ basement. “Sophomores are so immature,” Jen said, passing me a joint. I sat in the passenger seat of her ancient 4Runner, parked in front…
New Short Comic for Side A: “Young Lions” by Hal Flower

Mini-interview with Hal Flower HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? HF: While attending a series of screenings of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Decalogue, I came to understand that the writer’s aspiration ought to be clarity, not complexity. HFR: What are you reading? HF: Having recently finished…
Poetry Review: Nathan D. Metz Reads Marisa Lin’s Dream Elevator

Of all our wonderful and slightly un-universal definitions we have for poetry, perhaps the one most present and pressing to our twenty-first-century imaginations is that poetry, by its mere existence, is an attempt to reckon with movement—its nature, reasons, and consequences. In Marisa Lin’s first chapbook Dream Elevator,a title that invokes both physical and psychic…
Poetry Chapbook Review: Jess Chua Reads Root Rot by Rhienna Renée Guedry

Root Rot, Rhienna Renée Guedry’s debut chapbook, piqued my curiosity for several reasons. For as long as I remember, I’ve loved nature and the environment. I also enjoy examining the darker side of life and the psyche, and how we cope when processing experiences like loss and grief. Furthermore, the poems were written on or…
Sandra Marchetti: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

Lake at Dusk for GMH He said it shonelike shook foil.It was that butadd gas rainingthen light a match,or plug it in.It was as if youthrew live coilsbeneath, a sparkingroil the kayakssliced throughto reach the draping shore. Crustacean Like pinball flippers or the barin a coin pusher game, redlegs scuttle to the rock’s edgewhere my…
New Side A Flash Fiction: “Don’t Look at the New Moon Through Glass” by Alison L. Fraser

Don’t Look at the New Moon Through Glass I put her superstitions away for later, when she had proven herself to be a ghost. Hand outstretched towards me, obscenities dripped from her fingers, her brain encased in cancer, her frontal lobe an abyss of dead matter, she told me not to leave her with that…
A “Test” for Side A: Visual Poetry by Valen Arcelo

Mini-interview with Valen Arcelo HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? VA: One of the turning points that has shaped me as a writer was discovering the novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski and the poem “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r” by E. E. Cummings. Honestly, the first time I saw these…
Poetry Review: Jeffrey Kahrs Reads Amelia Rosselli’s Epic The Dragonfly

By any measure The Dragonfly is an extraordinary work of a young poet stretching the language between meaning and the paradoxical, and in turn engaging in an often-Manichean battle to define the ethical and moral. Sailing into the wind of the era of existentialism, the tacking and lurching of Amelia Rosselli’s poems reflects her singular…
Nonfiction Review: Eric Aldrich Reads Marcia Aldrich’s Essay Collection Edge

I’m reading Marcia Aldrich’s essay collection, Edge, when I get a text from a friend who is worried that he’s found bones belonging to a deer he knows. Edge is largely, though not exclusively, a book about deer, and I receive my friend’s message at the same moment I’m reading an essay in which Aldrich…