Author: Heavy Feather

Haunted Passages Fiction: “On Sarpy, Nebraska, and the Places I Go During a Seizure” by Bella Koschalk

The yellow-bellied swallow has chosen me to facilitate her death. We are sitting on a concrete stoop under The Motel’s awning in the Midwest rain. I hold the bird in my hand and I do not think about bird-borne illnesses. She stirs, she is starting her final surrender. I am wearing my ex-stepbrother’s hand-me-down sneakers,…
Flash Fiction for Side A: “Anglers” by Dan Shields

Anglers We watch their suns drift like pulp to the bottom of the glass, these days between sleep and the gasp. We skim them like stones on a creek. These days we squat and moan—old tequila worms squirming in the bottle. A big yellow bus scrambles past the bones of a stop. Our stop. The…
“Guns on the Roof”: Peter Valente Reviews The Survivalists, a novel by Kashana Cauley

They torture all the women and children Then they’ve put the men to the gun Because across the human frontier Freedom’s always on the run —from “Guns on the Roof” by The Clash Kashana Cauley’s novel The Survivalists deals with questions of race, class, and the problems of late capitalism in a story that revolves…
“This World We Are Constructing”: An Interview with Alyssa Quinn by Nina Shope

Alyssa Quinn’s debut novel, Habilis, takes place in a mysterious anthropology museum that converts into a disco club at night. When Lucy, a young woman with an uncertain past, finds herself thrust into this museum, she must confront her own origins—and, all the more difficult, the origins of the human species itself. Quinn is the author of…
Side A Poetry: “California” by Dara-Lyn Shrager

California The weeping cherry trees behind our housewere once no taller than kindergarten boyscolliding plastic trucks on a carpet of EZ grass.Now, giant leaf canopies block the sun.There’s just the lone dog out there, chasingsudden whips of wind. Deep beneath my collar,I feel cold. Hungry for those half-eatenbowls of Cheerios left bloating by the kitchensink.…
Side A Hybrid: “Anecdotal Evidence” by Edie Meade

Anecdotal Evidence I. a. A man’s hand amputated at the lumberyard maintains a distal phantom structure through pins and needles continually fingerpicking “Wildwood Flower”; more research is needed into phantom limbs as a grief of the body. b. Necromancy cannot call up legs blown off in Belgian trenches, in part because there is nothing to…
“Please Consider an Upgrade,” original short fiction for Haunted Passages by Carrie Bindschadler

Dear Declan, Thank you for your recent purchase of our signature Home Seance Basic Package. This specially-curated package is our most affordable option. This package allows you to contact a single recently-deceased human being or beloved pet one time only. If you are interested in repeat spiritual visitations, you will need to upgrade to the…
Dr. No, a satirical spy novel by Percival Everett, reviewed by Adam Camiolo

Dr. No, the satirical spy novel by Percival Everett, is uncommonly funny, ridiculously smart, and has a serious score to settle. It is, in short, quite good. The book follows the misadventures of Professor Wala Kitu, a theoretical mathematician whose name is Tagalog and Swahili respectively for Nothing Nothing. Wala specializes in Nothing, an abstract…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Matt Wedlock

Tatterdemalion She goes to the laptop on her bed and clicks away with the mouse. It turns white, then cherry colared, then tells herself she needs to update the template. They read for a while, laugh at the link to Waheeda Rehman’s interview in 1996. In the cornerthere’s another tool the techies might send her:…