Category: The Last Word

Writers getting the last word. HFR is invested in elevating art by marginalized groups with this feature.

“Same Green”: A Short Story by Lucciana Costa

If you stay: if you stay, it will kill you. You will wither, shrink, shrivel up like a slug in salt. Your brain will leak out your ears if you hear Braden Jenkins call Owen Meany a faggot one more time, his desk just far enough away to be out of physical reach. Not that…
“Hands”: Poetry by Tam Nguyen

On March 16, 2021, a white gunman committed mass shootings in the Northern suburbs of Atlanta, United States, resulting in the deaths of 8 people, 6 of whom are Asian women. Show me your hands. Should you know there’re Ways to make the world tender? —More than the pairs of hands That corked a…
Four Poems by Sarah Cavar

POV: Asking my clinician what he will get me (free) My doctor foots an opening too small for me.A catholic chamber, tabernacle tight. Beast-abreastIn steady follow.Satan’s like a tabby fat these days, a six of furringpounds and ribs and ounces. A pussynot the coward-kind or catBut like the act of snatching. eating poem dishes on…
Three Poems by Lisandra Perez

How to Be Happy Consider this: buy a straw hat (maybe two), toss a bag over your shoulder,and walk west where dusk settles on mountains that become line drawings.Move to Montana where sweat beams multiply as hands massage tomatoseeds into the dirt. Gently push the hair from your face. Consider a ponytail and walk west…
“Neither Fish Nor Fowl”: A Short Story by Yunya Yang

He knows my name, my real name. Not Katie. Katie is my English name. I came up with it so that people wouldn’t have to be stumped by a name that starts with an “X.” During the uncomfortable pause as people stare at my real name, I will add, “I go by Katie, by the…
Three Flash Fictions: Andrew Tran

Moniker My “friends” kept calling me, Asian. And I was Asian, I am Asian. But they called me Asian as if it were my name. Like it was on my birth certificate, like I’d put it on a resume, or end a love letter that way, or even put it on my tombstone. At first,…
Four Flash Fictions: William C. Blome

Talking I’d been seeing the flashing blue and red lights coming up fast behind me, and so I was soon forced to pull over by a uniformed highway patrol person for speeding. As I groped around in the glove compartment for my registration card, I found and slipped my hand into an orange puppet that…
Flash Essay: “Pervert” by L Scully

I’ve been a pervert for Many Years he says, smiling at us in the backseat. He tells us his wife is with child and that’s why we had to stop for bananas. He wears a blue polyester polo and porn sunglasses to give us a ride. When we get to the sex party it’s a…
“Ten Reasons Why You, as a Country’s President, Should Send a Congratulation Message to a New President of Another Country,” a short story by Zhihui Zou

#10: You need someone to talk to because you have poisoned the tea of all your colleagues. #9: You need to suck up to them because your country has no nukes. #8: You need to remind the public that your country is actually a country and not a joke. #7: You and they share the…