Category: The Last Word

“The Importance of Learning How to Match Your Foundation”: Fiction by Em Mingus

I. When I was in third grade I got my first job. I helped my neighbor roll all the coins in his ten-gallon jugs into the paper wrappers he got from the bank. He had about eight containers filled to the brim with dull metal hidden the back of his basement. We could only work…
Aby Kaupang Poetry: Selections from 13 Words

In the month following Donald Trump’s election to President of the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center received over 1,094 reports of hate crimes. A burst of hate. The following poems were written with the assistance of the Hate on Display database through the Anti-defamation League’s website and in-part for the Holter Museum of…
Three Princess Poems by Frances Donovan

What Snow White Swallows ginger snaps /a matchstick square pizza in the school cafeteriaher body spreading in the mirror / grotesque the white cheek of a poison applethe red cheek of a poison apple cookies from the keebler elvesgrow up fast /her fault her fault her fault arnold whole wheat bread /sweet bliss of chocolate…
“#MeToo All Over Again”: Gay Degani Interviews Jacqueline Doyle, Author of The Missing Girl

Every story in this short collection, The Missing Girl (Black Lawrence Press, 2017), is strong, evocative, and terrifying. Jacqueline Doyle gives us a prism: eight stories with eight different approaches on the continuing issue of misappropriate, dangerous, and often deadly behavior toward women. Jacqueline Doyle’s flash collection The Missing Girl won the Black River Chapbook Competition at Black…
Two Poems by Julia Cohen

Passover Lullaby for Elijah, April 19 2019 / Elegy for Chabad of Poway SynagogueApril 27 2019 A sinkhole of humansA marquee of humansA nomad of humansA lake of humansA smuggle of humansA kibbutz of humansA pollen of humansA grenade of humansA hammock of humansA Shirley Temple of humansA bloviation of humansAn occupation of humansA foliage…
“Puzzle-Piece Blues,” original short fiction by Selene dePackh

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. [harsh black and white comix-style cyberpunk image of feminine face repeating within itself from multiple angles] Puzzle-Piece Blues Case Study [delete]* Bear in mind that I’m a suspect witness. Everything I say is subject to erasure. I make for deaf ears, pressure-popping like plastique in an airline…
“To Be in a Time of Extinction,” prose poetry by Violet Mitchell

—after Etel Adnan To find a list with macaws, to read of the eastern cougar, to try to imagine the sound of its growl, to set down the list and your diet cola, to check the time, to check the calendar, to find a pen, to write a grocery list, to forget detergent, to…
“Puritan Remnants,” an excerpt from Time’s Up! A Memoir of the American Century by Robert Cabot

Blending history, essay, travelogue, and autobiography, Time’s Up! is a personal and political saga: luminous, probing, and absorbing. At constant odds with his Boston Brahmin lineage and upbringing, Robert Cabot confronts white privilege, rejects the conventional trappings of wealth and fame, and critiques our American heritage of colonialism, imperialist yearnings, and penchant for perpetual war. In alternating…
“An Ending for Her,” flash fiction by Matthew Meriwether

What if I walked up to your front door again. What if, at the sight of me on the front porch, the same front porch with so many stale memories, instead of laughing at my patheticness, you smiled with surprising relief. What if you had gained a little weight, the weight symbolic of your settling…