Category: The Last Word

Poetry: “Swallowed Whole” by Christopher Latin

even my god/ can be colonized even my body/ is a preexisting condition but what/ of love/ do we have to be ashamed —from a version of “Crimson Ring,” a poem for Sasha Wall screaming is the best way to not be silent mouthful seizure of want night’s long teeth sweetheart …
“More Than This,” a poem by Tim Carrier

Yes, I liked it when we had abundance. Liked its love. Like we were sitting up on the roof rolling thin white cigarettes, with a pale tobacco, very light on the fine white paper. Ryan climbing up to the long flat roof with a bag of Fritos. Karen in her faux-hide boots, with shining gold…
Poetry: Bryan D. Price’s “Station to station”

The ocean is wide but the road is onlyas long as an upturned truckswaddled in flames.To one another they refer tothemselves as pilgrims,though their devotion to the pastoral is conditional,like the words of a balladrevered more for the violence of the roomthan for the persistence of its intentions.These words are percussive.Voiced rhythmically.Not staccato like pistol…
“Rainbow Rock-Climbing Club,” a poem by Adèle Barclay

I’m a gecko on a wallthat simulates a cliffwith rainbow gripsI’ll touch any colourthat’ll have me touch itmidway is high enoughwary of emotional cliff-jumpingI don’t mean homesteadinglike that queer you overheardat Turk’s talking babiesafter only a monthI mean relentless breathlessnessand forgetting to hydratehaving met at an awkward sex partywe now call it a datebecause we…
Two Blueprints by Nicole McCarthy

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Nicole McCarthy is an experimental writer who earned her MFA from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared in Glass: a Journal of Poetry, The Shallow Ends, Dream Pop Press, b(o)ink, Crab Fat Magazine, Ghost Proposal, FLAPPERHOUSE, Tinderbox Poetry, The Fem, Memoir Mixtapes, Civil Coping Mechanism’s…
“Shut up and dribble,” poetry for by Tara Campbell

Shut up and dribbleShut up and playShut up and stand for the anthemShut up and step out of the carShut up and put your hands behind your headShut up and bleedShut up about your wrongful death suitShut up about your rights Shut up and take your mylar blanketShut up and get in the cageShut up…
Three Poems by Gina Marie Bernard

Dry Drowning The farmer tilts his Monsanto cap back from the bronze horizon of his forehead, stabs a finger to Formica with enough force to rattle silverware, and swears to God—and those of us in the café— that he most assuredly has found a writhing bowfin buried in the black soil of his north forty…
Fiction: Marleen S. Barr’s “A Feminist Extraterrestrial Special Forces Commander Causes Trump to Become Gone with the Wind”

The civilian body armor market was valued at $72.2 million in 2016 and is expected to more than double by 2024, according to Grand View Research.—Tiffany Hsu, “With Schools as Targets, Security Outfits Flourish,” The New York Times, March 5, 2018, A17. I was sitting in the eye doctor’s waiting room scared to death because I…
Poetry: “Non-” by Britt Canty

Boundaries. We need boundaries, you said. You were nothing if not a man of reason. My fingers raked the cement, still clay-like. I wanted to leave an impression before it turned solid. Before you left. Shards of shell and rock crowded into the skin beneath my nails. I tried to write my name so that…