Category: The Last Word

“Dear Dana Loesch,” an interactive poem by Rachael Shay Button

Dear Dana Loesch, Todaywhile you tweet,Parklandstudentsreturn:retrieve backpackscell phones,windbreakers,water bottles,chapstick,math books.Returnto classroomswhere they satsilentin supply closetseyes adjustingto darkears tunedto the soundof breathof shots. Dear Dana Loesch, You kept your kids away from public school homeschooled opposed testing standards wroteMamalougesabout raising your babies unrushed. Your children got to start slow lessons on the living room rug lunch…
Fiction: “Abortion Clinic, 2021” by Beth Fiset

We wait in rows along the walls until one of our names is called and we reshuffle. We wait seated in chair clusters. We wait huddled over one another to sleep for hours on end because we can’t help ourselves, though, we want to be awake when they call so we are not skipped over…
Essay: “The Mourning After” by Diane Payne

Hungover with sadness, shame, booze, and fatigue, I walked with the dogs to the park. This time of year, when it’s cold and the ground is wet, no one is at the park. But there he was: the man with the bike charging his phone at the picnic table pavilion. After exchanging morning greetings, I…
Poetry: “Wolves” by Luke Newell

After Allen Ginsberg The worst minds of our fathers’ generation laugh maniacally as they fuck us to within an inch of our lives,And tell us how it’s our fault because we’re so entitled becauseWe want to buy a house, because we drink and smoke andWatch videos of cats on YouTube but they don’t realise that…
“When Angela Asks Me a Question,” a poem by Antonio Lopez

—for my hermanita when she loses hope in school You’re armed with a non-toxic shadethat bleeds through Xeroxed sheets—the wicked clonesof an English textbook. Office Depot-issued holsterof highlight markers take aimat the 12 PT tremor. “Hey Tony, sorry to bother you.But what is this asking?” Thirty dollar uñas gloss over the district’s wear-and-tear,…
“AR-15,” a poem by Gabriel Welsch

A reason to burn the newspapers.Arrive to work in tears from hearing the Ardent words of parents on the radio immolating anyArguments about the right time, the right Areas to debate. Yearn for when the world ignitesArdor. Every few minutes Arch your back, deny the screen, roll yourArms to get the blood flowing properly. Watching…
Three Poems by Jill M. Talbot

Retrial: If We Just Lay Here If I just lay hereLet’s just lay hereIf we just lay hereIf you are the heroI will be the bad guyIf I am the bad guyYou can be the heroIf we just lay hereIn our superhero costumesIf we wear our costumesTo bedWe’re something else entirelyIf we’re something else entirelyWe’re…
Fiction: “Routine Cleaning” by Cate McGowan

Streetlights still gleam—their night-timers tick toward daybreak. You drive dawn’s early light, the rush-hour race. You park in a pot-holed lot, sit for a minute, delay entrance to your periodontist’s building, sigh at the drizzle, murky sky, construction cranes. Across the street, ambulances blurt horns as they enter a hospital breezeway. An empty freight train…
Seven Political Animals by Jessy Randall et al.

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Jessy Randall’s visual poems have appeared in Poetry, Rattle, and The Best American Experimental Writing. A collection of her diagram poems, How to Tell If You Are Human, is forthcoming from Pleiades Press in 2018. She is a librarian at Colorado College and her website is bit.ly/JessyRandall. …