Author: Heavy Feather

Wound Is the Origin of Wonder, a new poetry collection by Maya C. Popa, reviewed by Shannon Nakai

“I can’t undo all I have done to myself, / what I have let an appetite for love do to me.” So opens the staggering latest collection of Maya C. Popa’s poetry, eloquently titled Wound is the Origin of Wonder. Such an opening couplet would suggest a poem of betrayal or unrequited love, but rather…
New Flash Fiction for Side A: “Neighbor Girls” by Niles Baldwin

Neighbor Girls The mother before there were her babies was a child. Before she brought the world her daughter and son, she could remember being born. The first memory after being born was seeing a woman with a person in her belly. She remembered that belly person born too. They grew up together, neighbor girls.…
Bad Survivalist Original Short Story: “Eating Ass and Getting Eaten” by Aaron Timms

The bikers pass my apartment every afternoon, rising and falling in their seats like dolphins stitching through the waves. I observe them from my window, moved each time by the acrobatics, the revved wheelies and breakaways, the marriage of these swaddled bodies to the howling machines. My line of sight stretches down a long straight…
Flash Fiction for Side A: “The Short History of the Long Road” by Harsimran Kaur

The Short History of the Long Road Some called you golden. Golden as in Kintsugi. Kintsugi as in America. America as in Dear America, what else could you give us? Giving as in holding hands at Thanksgiving and singing a prayer in praise of all the thank yous you’ve garnered over all the seconds in…
Breakfast in Fur, a poetry collection by Jessica Murray, reviewed by Beth McDermott

In a world no longer quiet with belief, Breakfast in Fur, Jessica Murray’s debut collection of poetry, refuses to entertain naïve assumptions by imparting a sense that what peace there was, has been obliterated. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag writes, “No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking…
A Haunted Passages Short Story by Rick White: “Memo from the Beyond”

To: Rickety White (that’s a stupid name) From: Afterlife communications dept. Re: ghost of dead father Dictated but not read. Well now, not long to go until the littlun arrives. You must be very excited. One thing that’s probably worth mentioning—don’t be surprised if you start seeing your dead dad from time to time. You…
Flavor Town USA Poetry: “Cravings,” an original sonnet by Molly McGrane

Torn from the ashes we haveold women come to remind us that skinny looks good in dresses but not onfaces. Die with a naked mole rat visage or die of diabetes with a #7 double.In junior high I ate cheese until grease dripped with my tears down my chins. Retirement will hide the animalistic tendencies…
Three Original Poems by Lauren Ireland for Haunted Passages

Serotonin Mountain They will call you bravebut what they mean is scary.Falling down the mountainis so much harder than clawing up.Summiting is not a verb I recognize.You must not change your life.When you change your lifeyou ruin someone else’s.You are a rockslide of terror.One look backward andthey will be where you are. I am a…
Book Review: Alex Carrigan on Afterword, a novel by Nina Schuyler

As we continue to debate the ethics regarding artificial intelligence in this day and age, one of the main questions regarding the abilities of AI is that if it can do something, should it? If it can create art or write term papers, should the AI be chastised for this when it was specifically programmed…