Category: The Last Word

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

“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…
“The Autolycus Syndrome,” flash fiction by Jay Merill

Giles lived for dressing up in quirky costumes and pointing people in the wrong direction. Trickery was his forte. He was all wolf at heart but smiled at everyone with the sweetness of a curly sheep. Baaa. The snag was all his feats were imaginary and more than anything he wanted real. He wanted real…
“Everything Was Cliché and Nothing Hurt,” an essay by Alaina Symanovich

Paint this scene: imbue it with optimistic lighting à la Glee and the stench of yesterday’s cafeteria surprise à la every public high school in America: fill in any gaps with some universal notion of teenage angst and low-grade depression. This particular story unfolds in Smalltown, Florida, a wart on the pallid swampland; maybe it…
Poetry: “when i say fuck men” by Mandy Shunnarah

when i say fuck meni don’t mean the verbthat opens legsdrops pantscommands sex i mean the onethat dismisses menas worthlessthe verb that saysi’m donei’m outyou have nothing to offer me no one crosses my thresholdbut whom i allowthis space—my space—is barred to you when i say fuck menwhat i mean isi’m tiredwearyexhausted and exasperatedi don’t…