Category: The Last Word

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

Three Poems by Jessica Abughattas

Attachment (fearful-avoidant) Our half-drunk glasses of Cava by the kitchen sink. Smashing stems into the dust until my knuckles are bloodied. Opening the cupboard for more ammo. My roommate picking me up by the shards a soaked towel at my temples. Remembering the night we swallowed pills, danced a city into the living room. Singing…
Two Poems by Diego Quintero

Yankees The fall of a sound a shirt wrapped in sweat, the mouth the tooth both conjugated with spasm in flesh Sing my love, please sing the flesh made for each other inside each other. And Mom? And the house? She didn’t know of singular professions; the subtle act of bullfighting or playing out…
Five Poems from Monologues in the Era of the Monologist: Julie Strand

Ego Eco Iceberg: In the Dreamscape of the Monologist Bigly I love you. Bigly because the density of pure ice is about 920 kg/m³. Bigly I swear, that the density of seawater is 1025 kg/m³, is bigly you know. And bigly I hate you, but bigly I care. Bigly because most of me is above…
Essay: “Seattle Women’s March, 2017” by Amberly Baker

We are perched at the top of a hill, waiting, feet already starting to ache against the pavement. In front of us is a traffic light barrier we are not yet allowed to pass. My hands shake as I move in a small circle, careful to keep to myself, careful not to bump into anyone…
Essay: “Allyship” by Will Waller

Will Waller is a queer disabled experimental speculative author from the Finger Lakes Wine Region of New York whose writing focuses on memory, music, and the weather. After two years spent in San Francisco as the Managing Editor of Eleven Eleven, he moved to St. Louis to tune pianos and write. His experimental genre novelette,…
A Collage & Two Poems by Joe Balaz

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Immigration Killjoy Mechanical Sparrows All da mechanical sparrows stay broken chirp, chirp, choking to da oncoming corrosion as da shiny birdhouse up on da hill deteriorates into wun pile of small chips. Sing, song, singing along wit da copper doves on da telephone wires and…
Five Poems by Geoff Anderson

Excerpts: Letters from Thomas Jefferson to Barnum & Bailey [W]e have the wolf by the ear and feel the danger of either holding or letting him loose.—Thomas Jefferson January 3, 1776 A ringmaster’s best audience is a crowdof peers; who better to understandthe plight of standing outside a cageall the while knowing the bars holdback…
“locker room talk,” a poem by yarrow yes woods

i have not heard someone say grab ‘em by the pussyin any locker room. what i have heardis she just lay there so i stuck it in her assin middle school. this was not in the locker room,but at the row of lockers outside my homeroom.laughter of all kinds. this wasn’ta boys’ club. the grin…
Three Poems by Lucian Mattison

Una Trumpada Defined, punching a Trump supporter or being punched by a Trumpsupporter. Perhaps both, but that’s too egalitarian for its namesake. Le di a ese racista de mierda una trumpada fenomenal.Ese racista de mierda me dio una trumpada apocalíptico. And then you dream about punching racists in variety of circumstanceswhich only makes them more…