Author: Heavy Feather

New Poetry for Haunted Passages: “Night Terrors” by Mike Bagwell

The trick is to return from somewhereyou haven’t been. This time,I am climbing the buildingon top of the building. I’m ready now. Or, my reflection is.When the night gets sharp enough,it is feminine. It whittles itselfinto underwater caverns. The recipe calls for mirror shardsand a full jar of honey to make it easier.It won’t be…
“All About Eve”: Jesi Bender Reads Carolyn Oliver’s Poetry Chapbook Mirror Factory

“I’ll writhe wild-eyedfor your city full of spies drink their desire and spitit out in a flood.” Carolyn Oliver’s Mirror Factory is a chapbook of persona poems that focus on archetypal female figures, including: Catherine of Aragon, Emily Dickinson, Iphigenia, and the ultimate Abrahamic feminine symbol, the OG if you will, Eve. The title comes…
“Cheers to the Weirdos! Part Deux”: Jesi Bender Presents a Heavy Feather Favorites List for 2023

It’s almost 2024, another year, and I’m still a sucker for a year-end list. I love seeing what people enjoyed, adding to my TBR, and discovering new titles and authors. However, I also suffer from a very particular, what-some-have-deemed-“weird” taste. Given this affliction, I wanted to create an occasional list of suggestions from authors who…
“An Ontological Revolution”: On Jacques Darras’ John Scotus Eriugena at Laon and Other Poems by Peter Valente

In “To Augustine: On Paradise”—a central text in Jacque Darras’ John Scotus Eriugena at Laon and Other Poems—he writes, in the voice of a pagan in the 5th century A.D.: “As a youth, raised by my direct contact with Nature, I was a pagan. Although I never observed the formal rites or sacrifices of the…
New Side A Flash Fiction: “I Want to Live in Your Old Lady” by Christina D’Antoni

I Want to Live in Your Old Lady I want to live in your old lady, I messaged the woman on Airbnb. I hoped my phrasing might catch her attention amidst the booking requests, evoke a certain voluptuousness for life. A deep, deep need to stay in this very trailer on the beach. From the…
Original Poem by Caitlin Grace McDonnell: “Dear Wolf”

Dear Wolf, It’s been seven years. What happened in those woods is a story that keeps changing. Sometimes you are very large and toothsome. Sometimes you are a man in uniform. Sometimes you are my grandmother; sometimes, you are me, but smaller. Wolf, I can still see you behind that tree, poking out like a…
“Beans”: A Haunted Passages Flash Fiction by Eli S. Evans

In Nebraska, the cows are all standing close together, but as there are various reasons for which cows might choose to stand close together, I do not know the reason the cows in Nebraska are all standing close together; later, in Iowa, the cows are all standing far apart, but as there are various reasons…
Nonfiction Review: Ariana Duckett on Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

Elif Batuman completed her PhD in comparative literature just before publishing her essay collection The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. While working towards the degree, she spent a summer abroad translating and analyzing Uzbek and Russian prose and poetry. She poses an insight on novel writing: “the novel form…
Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads George Perreault’s lie down as you were born

George Perreault’s lie down as you were born not only makes a song of grief, but peoples a town, grows a forest, seeds a sky, and weaves a myth in threads of sorrow. I was so immediately taken with these poems, pulled in and not allowed ransom. In these poems the voices of father, mill…