Author: Heavy Feather

Flavor Town USA Poetry: “I served Kirk Douglas at Swensen’s ice cream” by Laurel Benjamin

peach or butterbrickle, but never anything heavyin the year of the flood. “50 years in 50 weeks”wineries up north washed away, plateaus turnedto sand, minerals leached on the edges of the baywhere tall grass bent for ducks. I signed offon a wardrobe of black slacks & a white button down,but changed for clubbing into cargo…
“Abandoned Cities in Need of Light”: Kara Dorris Reviews Psych Murders by Stephanie Heit

Stephanie Heit’s Psych Murders starts with a warning and a promise that draws us in and acts as comfort as well as trigger notice. In “Admission Threshold,” Heit holds the door open into psychiatric treatment, allows us to stand in the doorway, the “safest and strongest part of a structure,” as we take a cautious…
“Twilight Zone Episodic Diagnoses”: Jonah Meyer Reviews Sommer Browning’s Poetry Collection Good Actors

Tell me which Twilight Zone episode you remember best, and I can tell you whether or not you’ll enjoy Sommer Browning’s 2022 poetry book, Good Actors. Pardon the spoiler alert, but the answer is a resounding “yes.” Browning’s introductory, one-sentence page “opens to reveal” for us an entryway, much like the open-curtain beginning of a…
John Elizabeth Stintzi in Conversation with Cameron Finch about My Volcano

John Elizabeth Stintzi is a non-binary writer, artist, and editor who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has been awarded the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s 2019 Long Poem Prize, the Sator New Works Award, and has been shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First…
Side A: “Winning Poem” by Bunkong Tuon

Winning Poem I try not to let it get to me.After all, what has poetry done for them?Did it stop the Khmer Rouge from makingGhosts of neighbors and family members?Did hands let go of sickles,Were throats spared?Did poetry fill ditches with lotusesAnd streams with fish?Did it bring back loved ones?What does it matter that my…
Side A Half-Sonnets from Now, Here, This by Ron Silliman

For Terence Winch & Ivan Sokolov ● Debby Harry listed as “someone you may know” on Facebook. The squirrel freezes along the trunk of the tree, barely breathing until the hawk soars off. The rot in Lenin’s tomb starts to bloom. She finds an empty pill bottle in the compost. The stanza begins elegant, ends…
Surface Tension, readable visual poetry by Derek Beaulieu, reviewed by Andrew Brenza

In Derek Beaulieu’s words, Surface Tension is “[a]t its core … a series of delicate, balanced poems, each symmetrical, palindromic, and made by hand using Letraset.” As such, it feels like familiar ground for the famed visual poet. But, as one proceeds through the book, that familiarity quickly fades. Through a process of manipulating base…
Fugue and Strike, a new poetry collection by Joe Hall, reviewed by Zach Savich

Let our meditation on Joe Hall’s terrific new collection of poetry, Fugue and Strike, begin with a brief survey of fecal refuse in nature poetry. Here’s Tommy Pico: Crappy water Shoots thru purgatory creek On its way to the Colorado River And here’s Trevino L. Brings Plenty, resplendent: You mean, if you see this world…
If This Should Reach You in Time, poems by Justin Marks, reviewed by Jeanne Griggs

If This Should Reach You in Time, by Justin Marks, is a collection of poems related by feelings of isolation and by the perception of failure in the systems we depend on, natural and political. If the news about school shootings, fake news, and migrant families has made you feel unsettled, these are poems for…