Author: Heavy Feather

Poetry Review: Scott Ferry Reads Luke Johnson’s Collection Distributary

In the rare and happy occasion of receiving a new Luke Johnson poetry book, one is ready to be floored. Those of us who have read :boys and Quiver know what we will get; it is not predictability, but surprising turns and brilliance. As we turn the first page of Distributary we encounter: “For you,…
“Visiting the Dilapidated with Hope in Your Heart”: Abbie Kiefer Interviews Poet Kelly Gray

Kelly Gray’s Dilapitatia is, in many ways, a book about haunting—how lineage keeps shaping the present, how the dead remain with us, how our minds and bodies keep returning to the mysteries that possess us. I recently talked with Gray about her collection. Gray is the author of Instructions for an Animal Body (Moon Tide…
“Tell It Slant”: Shannon Nakai on Recollection and Reality in Melora Wolff’s Essay Collection Bequeath

“Before she opened the book, and before I entered this picture, I did not know that love is a deed …” So culminates the themes of Melora Wolff’s latest essay collection, Bequeath, published by the Louisiana State University Press. Part ode to a father figure who is a loving, enigmatic storehouse of imagination, part unflinching…
Fiction Review: S. D. Stewart Reads Samuel M. Moss’ Novel The Veldt Institute

“Of course, the Veldt Institute is not commonly known—likely no one outside the Veldt Institute is aware of its existence—but it is clear that those who arrive do so at the exact time that is best for them.” This is not a review, per se. It is more a series of impressions and associations meant…
Side A Poetry: “Contrary” by Alina Zollfrank

We packed bottomless bags, sharpened ↑ stubby pencils, ticked none of the boxes, choiced □□□□multiplicity, essayed our thesis-loathing hearts out, regurgitated forgettable dates and wrong facts, and ran ○○○ circles around a track that put us in our ꜚ ꜚ ꜚ corners. We trusted suspiciously, argued respectfully, attended religiously except when we weren’t. We borrowed…
“The River Inside and Out”: Dave Karp on Matt Trease’s Poetry Collection The Outside

When I think about what it truly means to be an engaged writer, I think about writers who confront the world from some set of principles: Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, communist, or socialist, through an indigenous belief system or some other source of precepts and strictures. Matt Trease is just such an engaged writer,…
Nonfiction Review: McKenzie Watson-Fore Reads Gabriella D’Italia’s Debut Memoir Getting Dressed in the Dark

The crisis that catalyzes Gabriella D’Italia’s debut memoir, Getting Dressed in the Dark: An Artist’s Way Home, is a gruesome separation and divorce, when D’Italia learns that her partner of twenty-two years has been cheating on her with her much-younger coworker and friend. However, Getting Dressed in the Dark is much more than a divorce…
Poetry from the Future: “Makeup Revolution Highlighter in Supercharge Fever” by Georgia Slavec

Today in preparation for the apocalypseI memorize the labelof my favorite cosmetic highlighter.If I leave my room explodingsparkles, do not regard me. We in the darkare species: endless, like jazz, thoughtsthat will be told. Clear black bottlesof ink with the potential to beanything, or simply to definethe eyes, whose dramasrenew. I hear we’ve got twowarm…
Side A: Three Fictions by Andrew Bertaina

The Prayers of Strangers He pulled off at the gas station on the side of the road, gravel and rubber. At the pump, the attendant asked him if he wanted to confess anything. He’d forgotten that things were different in New Jersey, that the attendant walked right up to ask you if you wanted to…