Category: The Last Word

“Everybody’s Hurt,” flash fiction by Jill M. Talbot

Everybody’s Hurt “Can we do this outside, I want a cigarette.” “I heard that phone call, played it over and over, it sounded real—there’s a girl in real trouble, I thought—now just tell us what happened.” “Nothing happened.” “So you called 911 for fun?” “I didn’t say that, I said that I was confused.” “Are…
Two Poems by Success Akpojotor

two BUTTons sitting on our faces Nature’s changing course remains unsliced like a big garlic bulbrendezvousing in cycles of loops and a merry-go-round in an abyssinhabited by gypsies with no roots as a phone call is now a twentiethcentury culture: but we’ve seen this a thousand times from 1918 to 45& two BUTTons sitting on…
“TRANSCRIPT: Donald Trump’s Speech Responding to Assault Accusations,” erasure by Mackenzie Bush

And so now we address the slander and libels that was just last night thrown at me by the Clinton machine and the New York Times and other media outlets, as part of a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack. It’s not coincidence that these attacks come at the exact same moment, and all together at…
“Dumb Bunny Bomb,” a poem by Eric Tyler Benick

I think they dropped it this morning I awake in a warm pot with heirloom carrots and herbs de Provence asking what’s for dinner Outside my window is New York except today it is Laramie Wyoming I am told it is like this everywhere No casualties more a staggering casualness Televisions check their phones A…
Poetry: “Ouroboros” by Nancy Hightower

At fourteen, you see how the world is:the sky full of holes, your stepmother a wounded sparrow, prompting your father to hide all the guns. You’re the trigger, he whispers, slips you a pistol when you graduate college. At twenty-five, you receive an invitation to their hidden compound somewhere in the country, over the rainbow…
Three Poems by Lauren Bender

Misdirection Snow comes, heavy distraction. We snipe at each other in the mid-afternoon dark because there is no time for distractions. (i think?) no one is focused on a single wrong anymore or the wrong wrong. There is an itchy place for every injury we’ve built into our brain/keep building/keeplistening when we’re told we are…
Essay: “Another Person Asks, When Did You Become a Feminist?” by Lindsay D’Andrea

“It comes with the job,” my mother says—meaning a possibility that your boss may touch you when you don’t expect him to—“So why all the fuss,” “take it as a compliment,” after all “boys will be boys,” etcetera. This is the woman who raised me. I wish I were not ashamed by her philosophy, wonder…
Poetry: “Lone Wolf” by Jill M. Talbot

Lone Wolf Lone Wolf: dangerous andinadequate: see God: see proofof quantum mechanics: see Einstein:see WWIV: see roman candle: seeRenaissance: see writers: see Woolf: seeBook of Job: see impotent God: see existentialism: see internet meme: see joke: see punchline: see deadline: see autopsy. Lone wolf: pledgesallegiance to his own ego: see Freud: see flagpole: seeOedipus Complex:…
Three Poems by William Lessard

<en passant> the hammer i raised to my father’s skullholds open the bathroom window history is sometimes the breezethat enters through the daisy curtain in the moments before that momenti saw myself a flyinching a stippled surface joy was insect glorya moment rubbingeyelash legs in the history of survivor artthere is the theme of wishing…