Author: Heavy Feather

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…
Astrophil Press Novel Excerpt: WAITING FOR JONATHAN KOSHY by Murzban F. Shroff

From the author of Breathless in Bombay and Third Eye Rising comes an intensely engaging novel about life, family, friendship, and duty. In the heart of Pali Hill, the Beverly Hills of Mumbai, four friends await the arrival of Jonathan, a man “greatly appreciated for his wit, his effervescence, and his indignation,” a man exiled…
“And in a Heap Cam on Them with a Swack”: Notes by Peter Valente on a Few Passages in Gavin Douglas’ Aeneid with Examples of Its influence on Modernist Poetry

With new translations of Virgil’s Aeneid appearing last year, Shadi Bartsch’s translation of 2021 (only the second English translation from a woman; the first was by Sarah Ruden in 2009) and David Hadbawnik’s translation, which was published this past August, I thought it would be interesting to examine passages from the first English rendering of…
“I Drive, Therefore I Am”: Michael Quinn Reviews Today in the Taxi by Sean Singer

Born in Mexico in 1974, former New York City taxi driver Sean Singer recalls his time behind the wheel in his wryly humorous third poetry collection Today in the Taxi. Almost all of these prose poems begin “Today in the taxi” and follow the same structure: from the observational (who he’s driving) to the existential…
Side A Poem: “Content” by Heikki Huotari

Content 1. should a safe be dropped then so should a piano and to music and to money both should open I say privatize the positive and socialize the negative and call it content here a template there a template everywhere a template in the same way that I hope for your sake that your…
“Gatsby Goes Public”: A Critical Essay by Robert Crooke about America’s All-Time Favorite Novel

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s highly-praised and ultimately best-selling novel entered the “public domain” as of January 1, 2021, after 95 years of copyright protection. What happened to Fitzgerald and his subtle, gossamer web of a story during that century is as interesting as the novel itself, given how perfectly the real-life tale confirms…
Side A Poetry: “Sousveillance, or: The Springfield Sarah Jessica Parker Disaster” by Ben Tripp

Sousveillance, or: The Springfield Sarah Jessica Parker Disaster when money became speech Dyads parafin the duration non-machinable flesh mic at jowl non-camouflage couldn’t alter or predict cephalopod high-arousal unheroic teller city with lake interior The false antique no and subject theory I have failed the task of radiation cryptographic An air freshener with the…
“Signature Parallax”: Dustin Cole Reviews Tom Will’s You, the Viewer at Home, Moon

In Tom Will’s You, the Viewer at Home, Moon a totaled car looks like a praying mantis, love-making sounds like a string of pearls dragged down the road, and someone breathes Diesel light. It is a book of textual oddities, effortless in its fluctuation of consciousness and shifting points of view. Associations proliferate, questions deepen.…
“Haunting and Hunger”: K-Ming Chang’s Gods of Want Reviewed by E.B. Schnepp

Highlighting the crossroads of desire at once familial and physical, K-Ming Chang’s lyrical and deliciously experimental short story collection, Gods of Want, evokes a haunting sort of hunger. This collection is riddled with ghosts; moving through the stories we are confronted first with the literal ghosts of the lost and departed and then increasingly by…