Category: The Last Word

Four Poems by Martin Ott

Dead Man Lying The difference between life and death is the same broken line between truth and lies. Time defines both. History holds the mantras of liars and recasts them in our history books. The walking dead has never been about zombies. Our reporters hurry to unearth time machines before the damned redraw the circles…
Three Poems by b.g. thomas

big black wall a black woman must not ever assume that a smile means anything other than/ she is being sized up by the other/ to see where she stands/ how strong she might be/ what her heart might be made of/ that’s only if the other is accepting that black people are indeed…
This Is a Dream, a one act sci-fi screenplay by Success Akpojotor

CLOSE ON: A book is received by a black hand, and ensconces on the decorated table. INSERT. COVER PAGE TIME PILL BY DAVID OYEWOLE BACK TO SCENE The black hand opens the novel’s verso page and inscribes a legible and beautiful autograph across it; and returns it, to the Yoruba woman, in her mid-thirties, who…
Three Poems by David Welper

Reversals When I was a kid, my sister helped me button my shirts. We’d stand in front of a full-length mirror and I’d try to figure it out. Try to figure out mirror images. That’s really what she was teaching me. To look at myself. “What you see in the mirror is kinda the reverse…
Five Poems by Wren Hanks

My Binder is a Thundershirt ™ I need something stiff to breathe against like He-Man’s armor. Like the anti-anxiety jacket I velcroed around shaking terriers when I was a dog walker. Back then I zipped my hoodie to my neck. I wore Doc Martens & got muscle-skinny, riding the subway in giant headphones and licking…
“it speak(s),” a poem by Bryan Byrdlong

1. my fellow Americans we all float here, in this milleu in this atmosphere. In DIS gravity be a wishing well a penny for your thoughts and desires to come true, the American dream, but lately I’ve heard talk of an American fear. And so, we are gathered…
Poetry: Erika Luckert’s “Sonnet in case of disaster”

Put as many books as possible between you and the blast put as many bricks as possible as many walls as books between you and the blast will be big enough to breach as many bricks as this building has, its walls lined with books and those books lined with line after line will you…
Four Poems by Rachel Ann Brickner

Harvest Frame Inside the picture I felt a little lovable like a little kid version of myself again—adored and adoring, doting and doted—and I thought how lovely it is to be a picture, to stand still amidst fixed elements—a flower just gone to seed, my lover’s hand forever in my grasp, the child growing inside…
“Deus Le Colt,” a poem by Nancy Hightower

After the lone wolf Judas has killed himself,believing he disrupted the status quo here’s how the script will play outhere’s how the words will leave your mouth: White men in the West: We need guns to hunt for foodWhite men in the East: We need guns to protect our familiesWomen and children trace the pattern…