Author: Heavy Feather

New Hybrid Cento: “I Rewatch My Ex’s Favorite Film and Imagine Our Life Together” by Frances Klein

E—A cento of the Derek Jarman film Blue Once there are only two of us you set to work mapping the solemn geography of human limits. You are slow and deliberate, a dedicated cartographer. *** The empty book of a new year opens. I am the marble, you the sculptor. Your tool is a refined…
Poetry for Side A: “I Don’t Know Why He Mumbles in Group” by Kevin Ridgeway

I Don’t Know Why He Mumbles in Group But he does. Maybe they are prayers forhis insanity to be extinguished. Either way,he’s always shushed by counselors for causinga distraction. He likes to offer erroneous triviaabout his favorite band, The Beatles—and healways stands corrected by others. After 30years of sobriety, the only coping skill he hasto…
Zach Savich: Two from The Motherwell Sonnets

“. . . the purpose of abstraction in any field—art, science, mathematics—is, out of incredible richness and complexity and detail of reality, ‘to separate,’ ‘to select from’ the complexity of reality that which you want to emphasize . . .” (Robert Motherwell, “On the Humanism of Abstraction”) The Motherwell Sonnets considers what this kind of abstraction…
“Forever Young. And Terrorized.”: Brandon M. Stickney Reads Aaron Jacobs’ Novel Time Will Break the World

In 1976, a busload of children was hijacked by masked, gun-toting men. The Chowchilla, California (near Sacramento), bus kidnapping and live burial remains one of the most bizarre, and under-reported crimes in American history—from the $5 million ransom the wealthy perpetrators never got to demand, to the daring, bus driver-led midnight escape from the underground…
Original Prose Poetry: “Kiddie Pool” by Brad Rose

People seem to like it when I lie to them. It gives them peace of mind, although I’m not sure whether this is due to my strategy or tactics—that’s for the experts to decide. After giving the matter my full attention, I’ve resolved to pull more rabbits out of my coonskin cap. Until then, I’d…
New Poem for Bad Survivalist: “Dishes” by Lane Devers

I am telling you this because I have nowhere else. In my teens, I don’t cry for years at a time. In one of the first home videos I find, we had just bought a new washing machine. I still don’t know how to swim, never learned properly. I try to cure the dry spell,…
The Future Has Poetry: “Begging to Be Marooned” by David Dodd Lee

The geese cross the highway—five silent film comedians—while snowfalls on their slate-gray backs. I’m in seclusion. My parents are ata remove, like dolls placed in doll-shaped holes, but when you openthe box there are only cardboard edges giving shape to nothing but air.The narrator signs a lease. He lives in a haze of monofilamentand insurance…
Fiction Review: Jess Bowers Reads As If She Had a Say by Jennifer Fliss

From miscarriage to monstrous pregnancy, the women in Jennifer Fliss’ second collection, As If She Had a Say, often find their bodies in odd situations beyond their control. One woman finds herself dissolving into a puddle of water, then discovers it’s happening to every woman in the neighborhood. Another, a woodworker by trade, keeps getting…
Abby Frucht Interviews David Winner on His New Novel, Master Lovers

While clearing out his great aunt’s midtown apartment after her death, author David Winner discovered artifacts of her storied existence: notes from opera stars, love letters, and artifacts from the Middle East of the 1930s. His Aunt Dorle had been a co-founder of Angel Records and a prominent figure in the mid-century classical music world.…