Author: Heavy Feather

Flavor Town USA: Three Poems by Paul Siegell

SENDER. Kirwyn, some white space: A driver delivered our meal-kits on Saturday & I read your book to my wife last night while she fixed one for dinner. The transformation from raw to redaction. Only to transform again. There’s this pendulum we ride: When she works a 7a-to-7p at the hospital, I’m on eats. A…
Book Review: Francois Bereaud on Faith, a novel by Itoro Bassey

Nigeria is a vast country with a rich literary heritage. Award winning authors including Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have influenced writers and readers across the globe. Now, with her debut novel Faith, the Nigerian-American writer Itoro Bassey announces herself as one of the next voices in this powerful tradition.…
A-Sides: Six Poems after Bill Evans by Mark Lamoureux

Re: Person I Knew for Chris McCreary Chasm crier cryall day long outsidethe jewelry store. Hand models with skullrings pluck heart stringsstretched taut by two poleswith drawn-on lightning bolts. Ears’ chic cry Mr.Knowalittlebit abouta thing called lovelornnostalgia for an old-school’s out for summer; get your whitechocolate skull crushed by Korybantesat low noon, beside the bladed gills…
“Frenzy of material, frenzy of discharge!”: A Review of Zoe Darsee’s Poetry Chapbook Bell Logic by Maxwell Rabb

Music is ornamented by the caesura; by the muted punctures that impel the audience to imagine deprivation. The song’s melody is impeded, and for a moment, there is disorder. Immediately stopping a song’s melodic momentum, the listener is propelled into silence, but the song moves forward, unabated by the composer’s predestined pauses. In sequence, the…
“Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”: Michael Quinn Reviews Come Thunder by Barbara Helfgott Hyett

Like flashes of lightning, the 62 poems in Barbara Helfgott Hyett’s Come Thunder illuminate pivotal moments in a long life that reveal meaning in the seemingly mundane. Told in the first person by a woman named Barbara, they use plain language and striking images to explore the speaker’s evolution: how the little girl becomes a…
Bad Survivalist Poetry: “The Dark Knight Contemplates the Metaphysics of Pleasure” by Raza Ijaz

“You’ll leave me?” —Bruce to Alfred, The Dark Knight Rises What is pleasure, I think, as I beat up this goon of Bane. (I’ve been thinking a lot these days, as I beat people up, since Alfred kept his word and left). Is pleasure something I felt when I first started beating this deadbeat thug,…
Bad Survivalist: “Under the Orange Tree,” a short story by Emily Unwin

“Everyone in America has an agent,” Judy says. Mary Virginia has just picked up Judy from the Seville, Spain airport. Judy sits in the passenger seat. MV is trying to sell a Christian self-help book. Her knuckles are turning white. Her boyfriend’s mother, Judy, fiddles with the meditation beads around her recently remodeled but still…
“If I Had to Read It Again for the First Time, I Would”: Jacob Collins-Wilson Reviews Behind the Tree Backs by Iman Mohammed

Behind the Tree Backs by Iman Mohammed (translated by Jennifer Hayashida and including the full original Swedish version) is a short book of short poems that highlights imagery, nature, memories, and the strength of word-choice to create a cross-stitch of life during and after destruction. It is a book about growing up in war and…
The Future: Excerpts from The Mergered by Matthew DeMarco

Messages from the Mergered The three mergered billionaires, who share one body, prefer that I work from a different location than them for the duration of the day, except for during our prescheduled face-to-face-to-face-to-face meetings. On our calendars, these events are sometimes abbreviated as F2F2F2F’s or F4s. Fortunately, there are numerous places throughout the Plaza…