Author: Heavy Feather
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Pharoni, a novel by Colin Dodds, reviewed by Aaron Lee Moore
Thanks to the residual and resounding success of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, part of me now wonders if we’re now in for a resurrected trope of resurrected characters in literature. This is a sticky and risky wicket. Though with the notable exception of the biblical Christ, in most works of literature the loss…
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Review: Dave Fitzgerald on Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag, a novel by Adam Johnson
In my younger and more vulnerable years, I used to have a very bad habit that routinely got me into trouble. And I call it a habit, but really it was probably something closer to a crosswired tic—a kind of subconscious psychic defense mechanism—I couldn’t help it, I swear—but regardless, my insistence on its innocuous,…
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“Omens”: A New Haunted Passages Short Story by Andrew Bertaina
When the moon appeared, a violent red sphere riding low on the prow of the sky, everyone in the village watched it with an admixture of wonder and terror. Children pointed at it with stubby fingers, asking their parents about the gigantic moon, trying to capture it by closing their hands. Parents whispered to their…
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Side A: “Dissections,” a hybrid piece by Jacob Schepers
Dissections Aortic. Sudden. Injurious. A natural violence of the innermost. A seepage that breaks open the layers of the central artery. A spilling over, a rupture of what has just left the heart. It tears you apart from the inside; in that, it builds most often without warning until it’s too late, until you expect…
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Review & Interview: Kristina T. Saccone on Sue Mell’s Giving Care
“I need more pills.” My mom’s texts arrive throughout my day—during back-to-back work meetings, while I’m driving to pick up my seven-year old son from school, and at all hours. “I need more pills.” “Can you get me more meds. I’ve run out.” But she isn’t out of pills; my mom has dementia. The texts…
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“The Lilac Trash Enjamber”: A Review of Johannes Göransson’s Summer by PJ Lombardo
South Bend, Indiana, is a magnet for floral-horror. Summer there is so bright and blue it feels like a threat: poison grass, lively weeds, green fingers stabbing up the cracks on the westside pavement. Men wander in public and shout and wave their arms. Foxes dart. Gusts of real life. In the post-industrial midwest, terroristic…
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Review: Jacob M. Appel on Tyler C. Gore’s My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments
Digression has been recognized as a distinct talent since at least the twilight of the Roman Republic when Cicero served up tangents in defense of Sestius. Sterne hailed digressions as “the sunshine” of literature; Bradbury praised them as “the soul of wit.” From Dante and Milton to Murakami and Nicholson Baker, the art of meandering…
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“A visible light in the gathering darkness”: Peter Valente on Ennio Moltedo’s Poetry Collection Night
On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile during a coup d’état supported by the United States, overthrowing the democratically elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende. During Pinochet’s seventeen-year authoritarian military dictatorship, he persecuted leftists, socialists, and critics of his regime, which resulted in the executions and imprisonment of thousands of people, and…
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They Can Take It Out, a poetry collection by Cheryl Clark Vermeulen, reviewed by Anna Zumbahlen
The first poem of They Can Take It Out presents a recognizable scene: Halloween, children in synthetics, the speaker babysitting, reading, observing. But inflecting the voice is the specter of illness, which disrupts the security of the holiday and whatever memories or familiar images might attend it. Cheryl Clark Vermeulen’s collection takes stock of things…
Heavy Feather Review 