Author: Heavy Feather

The Wake and the Manuscript, a novel by Ansgar Allen, reviewed by Adnan Bayyat

The Wake and the Manuscript is a literary artifact pronouncing and protesting the inherent toxicity of education from cradle to grave. The brooding thesis, expounded through the prism of quasi-fiction, holds that “to become educated is to become sick.” Education purportedly “takes the fabric of life and tears it up and shits it out.” This…
Fiction from The Future: “The Freewheeling Bicycle Coast” by Perry Genovesi

In which the people of the Coast realize that the new way of walking was so much like how a bicycle coasts, that when they even looked at the bicycle parts in their refuse bins, they wondered why it had taken them so long to discover. ᐧᐧᐧᐧ Before we met Delilah, we all suffered the…
Side A Visual Poetry: “Autoimmunity” by Allison Thung

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes.[1] Mini-interview with Allison Thung HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? AT: A moment that particularly stands out to me is when I stumbled into the world of contemporary literary journals, discovered a category of publications (present company…
How to Start a Coven, a surrealist fiction chapbook by Deirdre Danklin, reviewed by Stephanie Bohland

Deirdre Danklin’s How to Start a Coven is a collection of haunting flash fiction that takes us through a fever dream of skeletons, banshees, and an ancient earth that hasn’t forgotten magic. This surrealist chapbook is comprised of previously published pieces, all powerful on their own, but it is in bringing together this assortment of…
Shannon Hozinec Reviews Meghan Lamb’s New Novel COWARD

Meghan Lamb’s COWARD opens with a burning sky that smells of blood. This is no harbinger of the apocalypse, however, as one might assume—we are promised that this burning is “natural, […] a part of life”; that it happens every year, and that there is an “other side”—an end—within reach. We need only sit and wait until…
Review: Jody Hobbs Hesler on Lisa Cupolo’s story collection Have Mercy on Us

The ten keenly observed stories in Lisa Cupolo’s award-winning debut collection Have Mercy On Us usher us into a world of strained relationships. Whether in Kenya, Canada, Florida, or California, every character struggles to exert more power than their relationships allow, to matter more than they do—to themselves or to other significant players in their lives. In…
On Joke Architecture in Elise Houcek’s Tractatus: “FINAL PROOF OF THE ETERNAL SUBJECTIVITY OF LANGUAGE!” by Maxwell Rabb

Words are playthings, and by no means is this trivial. There is an unadulterated joy to constructing language—to cutting up and arranging the pieces. There is suspense, an unalloyed momentum, to the words that endure tangibly in poetry. Unfortunately, language is frequently inundated by a deluge of abstractions, forcing the simple pleasure of words to…
Side A Poem: “Every Minute Is a Minute” by John Leo

Every Minute Is a Minute The invoice is ready for review.Download and attach the backup documents.Add the 14% fuel charge, plus energy feeequal to 10% of transportation costs.Initial and date. The invoice is readyfor review by a third party. In the den, you have received a request for bibliographicalinformation. Review the requested resource.Apply the article…
Flavor Town USA: Three Poems by Rachel Becker

morning sickness the world hasan atmospheric stenchthat turns yourstomach cyclonicfor the fullnine months. other mothers-to-beoffer advice,but there’s no wayto white chicken meator preggo popyourself out of bed,or to short circuityour brain’smaladaptive mishmashof wires. a glitchthat renders toxic aluminum, toilet bowl,skin cream, stove topthe stench of water. your baby at 12 weeksis a photo of a…