Author: Heavy Feather

Two Haunted Passages Prose Poems by Jason Davidson

Chamomile I dreamt last night of the stubbed toe. On my way home from the election, I stop at the smallest bank. After I step inside, I yell somewhat loudly: This is a stick-up, everyone put your hands in the air right now! The head teller is a woman with purple whiskers. She says: Sir,…
Book Review: Jen Schneider Reads Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Family Court Docunovel Mother’s Day in the Empire State

Constantia “Connie” Munda’s Mother’s Day in the Empire State: Or, an Answer to the Arraignment of Women is a family-court novel that dismisses the comforts of home and of an idealized narrative of motherhood. It sets forth its method early in its prose: this is, Munda writes, a “deposition novel discovered in the Public Records…
“Four Paintings by ______ (1928-1999)”: A Haunted, Microfictive Gallery by Addison Zeller

The Loud Aviatrix (1957) In the foreground, a crowd of well-wishers plug their ears and wince. A number of young girls seem particularly excited, judging from the jaunty angles of their novelty aviatrix caps, to witness the aviatrix’s arrival. The aviatrix, in her pink jacket, white jodhpurs, and lighter pink scarf, her pale skin and…
“How far the tree bends”: An Original Poem by Celia Lawren

Kill it! the children scream. A nightmare of black swirling shadows converge on the tree. They burn, hack, dismember limbs as high as they can reach, finally feeling tall. Torment is harder work than they imagine. Before darkness recedes, they run home, kids after all. With a great shudder, the tree heaves its leaves. Its…
New Poem by Holly Day: “Exhibit 421”

The heat given off by a nuclear bomb is so hot that it can bake a shadow into concrete, so that even when the person standing there, screaming, is gone, that last shadow of them standing there, screaming, can last forever and ever on the surface of a building, the way glazed tiles have lasted…
Fiction Review: Adam Stutz Reads Arqueles Vela’s Posthumous Collection Señorita Etcetera

“The door of the Café opens onto the most populous avenue, riotous with sun. Nevertheless, upon crossing this threshold hanging as if from the last rung of reality, one seems to enter the subway of dreams, ideations.” So begins this terrific translation by Julianna Neuhouser of Arqueles Vela’s formative work, Señorita Etcetera. This dual language…
Haunted Passages Hybrid by Cansu Açıkgöz: “Thursday, I Went to Pick Up the Dog”

Today is Thursday. I am going to pick up the dog. I had left him there for a few days. Maybe four. Maybe five. Along the way, the houses looked alike. Every antenna on the roofs leaned a little. Each door was slightly crooked. A yellow light flickered in the shop window. The dog seemed…
“Without Explanation”: Megan Nichols Reviews Susan L. Leary’s Poetry Collection More Flowers

In More Flowers, Susan L. Leary doesn’t have to explain herself. Instead, she creates a psychological landscape in which the speaker careens between questioning and asserting, between the concrete and abstract, between lyric and plain speak. The absence of a traditional narrative structure is not a weakness, but a departure from her previous collection, Dressing…
Haunted Passages Poetry: “One Thousand Ways to Die in a Cemetery” by Matt Zambito

Um, minus nine hundred ninety-nine?Zombies. Those total assholescrawling out of graves think love isthe taste of brains when the living alive knowit’s the art of a heart’s squeeze and releaseand appetite to please and be pleased.Reanimated monsters might munchthose pumping suckers, too. Oddimaginations have said as much, thoughflicks, tomes, and silly shows aboutthe pulsing deceased…