Author: Heavy Feather

Lifting Myself by My Own Toes, a debut collection by BD Feil, reviewed by Jen Schneider

Lifting Myself by My Own Toes, written by BD Feil and published by Finishing Line Press, is a powerful force—one that leaves us curious about, if not optimistic for, experiences that lie ahead, and contemplative about the past. The collection propels while remaining bluntly and squarely grounded in periods of time and places no more.…
Two Poems by Laura Minor

Big Dick, Small Town I Love You, Now Show Me Your Tits And just like that, the house of whores— If Sunday was a man, he’d be good, becomes the scourge of wooden hours— some digital acquaintance, a high, friend, superior, colleague, or mentor ruefully horny, delusional on their own back roads…
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…
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,…
“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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…