Author: Heavy Feather

“ATLiens and ‘american’ Identity”: Jacob Collins-Wilson Reviews Kamden Ishmael Hilliard’s MissSettl

MissSettl, Kamden Ishmael Hilliard’s debut book of poetry, unfurls language—it’s a book that seeks to play with sound, words, meaning and form all while trying to fight, to throw haymakers and knock “yt” America into a manifestation resembling respect and ethics, or at least acceptance. It is also a book of love poems, directly and…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Progress” by Derek Fisher

TurtlePhone and Positively Pete! roll across a hellish expanse of the Mojave Desert. Roll, and drag. TurtlePhone, equipped with wheels under his plastic frame, is rolling comfortably enough. Positively Pete!, wheel-less, and without autonomy or propulsion, is dragged by the green tail of TurtlePhone, an appendage of hard plastic and pointy at its tip, which…
“Peanut-Butter the Apartment”: Jonah Meyer Reviews Sarah Katz’s Poetry Collection Country of Glass

In her debut poetry collection Country of Glass, Sarah Katz has woven a humane and haunting book of poems. Imbued with a compassionate sensitivity that seeks to acknowledge and grapple with the harsh realities which too often afflict humanity, such as strife within both self and family, illness and assault, and larger societal and global…
Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters, a story collection by Maya Sonenberg, reviewed by Sally Whitehill

In her new short story collection, Bad Mothers, Bad Daughters, Maya Sonenberg weaves anthropological texts and court documents (and a Barbie textbook) with the magical realism of fairy tales in a poetic and measured prose that twists and deepens our sense of the conscious world through the lens of what it means to be a…
“Memetic and Disoriented TV Dinners”: An Interview with Garth Miró by Claire Hopple

The Vacation is a beach read’s evil twin. But sort of a saintly one. Throw Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Aquinas, and Mike Judge in a boat headed for the jungle and you’ll be on the right track. Garth Miró torches the corporate wet blanket and sails for oblivion. Two tickets to paradise await you; you…
“I Want My Hand in the Fire”: An Interview with Jon Woodward by Zach Savich

Jon Woodward’s new chapbook, POOLGOER and SPELEOGRAPHER from The Economy Press, is composed of columns that streak down the page 1 or 2 letters at a time. The effect is immensely absorbing, pleasurable, enlivening; each page is rippled with columns. Concrete poetry that directly imitates shapes (e.g., a poem about a flower that looks like…
“No Dimensions”: Matthew Kinlin on Evan Isoline’s PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY

In For a New Novel, Alain Robbe-Grillet argues, “Each novel must invent its own form.” In PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY, Evan Isoline constructs nine distinct zones, or what he calls emotional geometries, for a nameless narrator to drift through like a shadow beneath an endless sky. The sense of space in PHILOSOPHY OF THE SKY…
Flavor Town USA Fiction: “Sin Eaters LLC” by Will Musgrove

It was my first day. Inside the company vehicle, my trainer, Bob, read me the client’s file: sampling grocery store grapes, getting a little too tipsy on Sunday wine, several ticky-tacky sins, nothing a newbie like me couldn’t handle. Bob assured me the job was easy. All you had to do was eat the sin…
Side A Flash Fiction: “What Would You Say?” by Nicholas Claro

What Would You Say? I sent flowers. There was this card too, but I’ll get to that. My initial thought was roses. My next thought was too funeral-ish. It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of bouquet. What do you think? I said to The Florist. We were on the phone. What’s the occasion? he…