Author: Heavy Feather

Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Cravings,” an original sonnet by Molly McGrane

Torn from the ashes we haveold women come to remind us that skinny looks good in dresses but not onfaces. Die with a naked mole rat visage or die of diabetes with a #7 double.In junior high I ate cheese until grease dripped with my tears down my chins. Retirement will hide the animalistic tendencies…
Three Original Poems by Lauren Ireland for Haunted Passages

Serotonin Mountain They will call you bravebut what they mean is scary.Falling down the mountainis so much harder than clawing up.Summiting is not a verb I recognize.You must not change your life.When you change your lifeyou ruin someone else’s.You are a rockslide of terror.One look backward andthey will be where you are. I am a…
Book Review: Alex Carrigan on Afterword, a novel by Nina Schuyler

As we continue to debate the ethics regarding artificial intelligence in this day and age, one of the main questions regarding the abilities of AI is that if it can do something, should it? If it can create art or write term papers, should the AI be chastised for this when it was specifically programmed…
The Kirschbaum Lectures, a new novel by Seth Rogoff, reviewed by Jacob M. Appel

Who is Sy Kirschbaum? Is he a “neurotic anarchist” rebelling against society’s total systems of control as his analyst at Vermont’s Mountain View Clinic claims? Or is he a literary-translator-turned-mystical-gumshoe on a tortuous pursuit of purloined manuscripts and exegetic enigmas across Mitteleuropa from Weimar Berlin to post-Velvet Prague? And on which side of that diaphanous…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “Disrupted” by Ansley Clark

That is not a windowbut a circle cut in concrete the desire to consume smoldering like an expensive holidaywhat I have been for a long time becomes real as I walk through glass and metal landscapes the taste of badness in my throat several bags filled with receipts to avoid the building’s shadows which…
“Talk Show Host,” a new hybrid piece for Side A by Chris McCreary

Talk Show Host bombs his monologue. Checks his notes, blinks meaningfully into camera two. Talk Show Host throws his desk out the window. It hits the trampoline, bounces back onto his lap. Talk Show Host puts on his therapist’s cap, but the guests have removed their mics their mouths faces & eyes they’ve receded behind…
“Secret Rewards” Craft Essay: Jolene McIlwain on Writing PTSD in Fiction

You don’t want to think it’s your heart. You want to think it’s a pulled muscle, pinched nerve, or bad posture because you’ve always forgotten and slouched. But you agree to the stress test because if it is your heart, this is an early find. You’re only forty-seven. There’s time to repair. It’s been happening…
“Ashenfolk”: William Lessard Interviews Joseph Mosconi + 6 Exclusive Poems

Joseph Mosconi is a writer, editor, and curator based in Los Angeles. A former Google computational linguist, he is the executive director of the Poetic Research Bureau (PRB), a hybrid arts space that hosts weekly readings, performances, and films by today’s most progressive poets and artists. Mosconi is also a co-founder and programmer at 2220…
Fiction Review: Dave Fitzgerald Reads Agustin Maes’ Newborn

“It’s about a dead baby.” This is what author Agustin Maes will reliably answer if you ask him about his book Newborn. Soft-spoken, and humble nearly to the point of bashfulness (this despite being a runner-up for the Paris Literary Prize his first time out the gate), he doesn’t always seem to grasp the weight…