Category: The Last Word

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

Two Poems by Linette Reeman

As Donald Trump Is Being Inaugurated a girl and i stagger out of a tear-cloud and shakeinto each others’ mouths. there is no one i loveout of necessity, but this is a love hatched undera sky bursting and marred by flames. a week later, the joke is still good. we started dating becausea riot bloomed…
Four Poems by Katie Hibner

Smart Varmints You talk about how they’re smart varmints: they crawl out of a splintered helix,grow up crust-pluckingfor gratuities. They want to sic their reliquaries on ours,semantically blitzthrough our amber waves. They’re not cute and they’re not cubedbitesize;they gnaw on our breaded trade winds. You talk about howbots admit them through our firewalls,ignoring their flagrantly-laundered…
Five Poems by Alia Hussain Vancrown

Alif. Lām. Mīm. Morning’s glorious sclera peels night like peach skin.The casual tugging of a hangnail accentuates each hamzah. There is pain in meaningless recitation—when the bearded preacher arrives at the house before the milkman, it’s too earlyfor children to memorize sounds unable to be translated, struck into meaning from only his well-meaningbamboo discipline stick.…
Poetry: Five Found-Word Works of Resistance by J.I. Kleinberg

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. consume the unbearable this unwelcome we lost words J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, freelance writer, and co-editor of Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington (Other Mind Press, 2015). A Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2016 Ken Warfel Fellowship, her found poems have appeared recently…
Two Poems by Virginia Konchan

Insurrection Sonnet Night is irascible, like the words of hoary men who rule the world with their fistful of dirty dollars. Go ahead, fire me. Because personality emerges in the moment of dissent, as every toddler and Bartlebian figure knows. Before no, we are an unresisting marsh of mmm-hmm and yes sir. A veritable swampland.…
Fiction: Fortunato Salazar’s “Don/Juan”

When I hit rock bottom, I talked Marissa into the Magic Chef tattoo. It would hurt, the tattoo artist said. Most painful location you could choose. Didn’t matter, the Magic Chef left her no choice. Now I’d like to introduce my Bible study group: Rick, Moose, Andre, Dave the Hammer. Take the shortest route to…
Poetry: “Civil War Re-enactment: Kure Beach, NC, January 2017” by Suzzanna Matthews-Amanzio

The artillery drumfire of a civil war re-enactment—a frenzy of smallbirds, cries syncopated, rise—scattershot from the twisted branches Trees lie beyond the dunes—Carolina live oak—from the beach we seethe canopy stunted, flat—feruled by headwinds There is history that seethes beneath the sea—that keeps lapping at theland Shading our eyes we can see the shore stretching…
Essay: “a crooked thing is a riot/a riot is a crooked thing” by Hannah Rubin

i. there was a fire last night, of course there was. news cameras love the glow of orange against a black-clad body. makes everything look hedonistic when really it’s us just fighting for our fucking lives. ii. you know milo said rape culture was a fiction? I circle the word fiction loosely with my tongue,…
Poetry: “The Beautiful Ex, Who Was Once on TV” by Kyle Kineman

I still smell the sweat of machineson your chest, the grease of your night-shiftpalm, you were always oil on canvas,a James Dean in altar boy blues. I knowI’ve looked at you too many times latelyin the photos you’ve posted. You look good—your wet white shirt outlining every church boybulge as you emerge from some Malibu…