Category: The Last Word

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

Five Poems by Michael Augustine Jefferson

Ode to Robert Jordan, for Whom the Bell Tolls And I went into the wooded area below East and by the creek and there I cried about an hour smoking Newports against a tree with my knees there at the chin and my feet angled awkwardly ugly as it all feels when drained down the…
Three Poems by R.D. Landau

Ghazal Chocolate meditation: listen to the foil crinkle touch the smooth surface, bite off the tip, now eat the kiss. All she wants is to climb a tree in peace. But all these strangers (relatives) demand a kiss. She woke with the pain of childbirth (twins). What prince would slash through briar for a kiss?…
Three Poems by Jill M. Talbot

Saturday Night Palsy (i) I am not sure about this case. But that is not what I meant to say.What I meant was that my fingers disagree—my right hand—left brain has control since I have Saturday Night Palsy where your hand just gives up on life—an existential crisis—and no matter what it won’t face life.…
Five Poems from The Tongue of Narcissus by Jennifer Bullis

Echo’s Letter to Cassandra I can’t say I blame Hera for punishing me with this voicelessness,this accursed repetition. She has run out of ways to punish Zeus except by afflicting those in whom he takes his delights.Take them he does: he does charm, but never asks consent. Leda, Leto, Metis—not one of them told him…
Poetry: “A Non-Apology” by Katie Chicquette Adams

—for Sarah, “The Lion,” interpreter for American forces in Iraq Look, I’m really sorry there are terrifying people in your hometown who want to kill you because you helped me, that’s some rotten luck, for sure, but I gotta look out for me now. Me and mine, y’know? You’re taking this personally— it’s not…
Fiction: “Kirk and Anna Lee Just Disagree” by Vic Sizemore

After Anna Lee told her husband Ridvan she was leaving him, he got himself transferred back home to Meadow Green. To try and work things out. Suddenly he was no longer gone weeks at a time, but was always fucking home, always trying to get them to do things as a goddamned family. It was…
Three Poems by Heikki Huotari

CONSTITUENTS You are a good god yes you are (what I call love does not exist) so get me some constituents and fast. It’s always all about the U-turn, no? There is no wind, there is no spit. If we were Mars and Venus, exponentially decaying, and if half of us were gone, would we…
Fiction: Deena ElGenaidi’s “Attached”

Alison had gotten attached and couldn’t move, her body sticky, like someone had super glued her to the bed, to the sheets that smelled of laundry detergent, smelled like him. She tried to sit up but felt like if she lifted her body, her skin might peel right off, sticking to the sheets, leaving her…
Two Poems by Jennifer Conlon

Menagerie of Sexual Assault Fish have evolved to have four different types of mouth based on their feeding habits. * Disgusting animal. * The four types are terminal, superior, inferior, and protrusible. The 45th man to preside our country has a mouth type somewhere between inferior and protrusible. * I just start kissing them. It’s…