Category: The Last Word

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

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…
“Republican Jesus and Real Jesus Meet at the Endeavor Diner,” fiction by Ron Burch

Republican Jesus says, “So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. Unless you’re poor or an immigrant or you look dirty.” Then he says, “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole…
“Monster,” a GIF comic poem by Matthew Kramer

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Matthew Kramer is a, writer, illustrator, and artist in Providence, Rhode Island. He is an MFA candidate in Literary Arts at Brown University, where he teaches comics. His artwork can be viewed at matthewckramer.com and canttakemeanywhere.com. “The comic poems are a series of soliloquies and dialogues in which everyday aphorisms, thoughts, and…
Two Poems by Jill M. Talbot

A Picture of Me When I Was Young and Dead iThey say this picture is pretty,This picture of which I was dead for.They like me this way. Taking a photo with a laptopAfter a wedding. It’s already gone—I blinked, I moved.I grew teeth, I found a pulse.Am no longer pretty— The way the cashier took…
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…