Category: The Last Word

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

Poetry: Sarah Duncan’s “Umpqua”

*For those killed by Chris Harper-Mercerat Umpqua Community College The school is closed. The school is open tobodies, warm and laughing. The school isonly open to ghosts. There are 10 ghosts 9wounded, 10 dead 320 millionwarm, wounded. The gun is coldand apologetic. The gun is warmand laughing in cold hands, white boyhands in a…
Five Poems by Liza Flum

Daily Action Today I call my representative.I call the one who representsmy representative: Representative,youfloating somewhere over my shoulder, crow on the telephone line, squat black spanof my hand in the polis, what little markdo I make on the whitelandscape of this world that asks for my bloodand asks and asks as the bandageasks the woundtill…
Erasure: “Genesis 2, 3” by Demi Demirkol

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Demi Demirkol is an LA-based poet and artist. She is the author of I Have One Daughter or Maybe Millions, a self-published series of erasure poems paralleling archival erasure with bodily violence. She has participated in poetry workshops at University of Tennessee, Knoxville and University of California,…
Essay: Anna Laird Barto’s “Telenova Tyrants”

I saw Fidel everywhere when I studied in Havana in 2004. Not the man himself, but his image, broad-shouldered, bushy-bearded, on postcards and billboards, grinning slyly through rings of smoke or gazing ferociously over the horizon, finger pointed at an unseen oppressor. His words were immortalized in black and red spray paint on the ruins…
Poetry: “is it god inside you?” by Charlie Waddle

On election night, it is latewhen the gathering, that is no longer a party,ends. The walk home becomes mostly silent.November night has no concern for union’s fractured stateit waits for morning, washes light awayFails to consider that darkness cannot be safe You are not safetelevision warns. The ocean is violent, even if its fury arrives…
Poetry: Ela Thompson’s “The Labyrinth”

My grandmother’s house was painted a dark, graying eggshell blueand was very near the southern border of the Catskill Mountains.After the death of my grandfather she sold the house, the barn, the manyacres of field and forest. No one was surprised.Death contaminates the heavy rivers of our bodiesand we must move…
Essay: “Feelings on Breastfeeding in the Age of Terror” by Lee Matalone

“For those who are against breastfeeding in public the issue is often not about themselves, but in protection.”—“The Breastfeeding in Public Debate,” published on a site focused on women’s health I tell myself, do not trip over that bag on wheels, or that bag on wheels, the one overflowing with bananas and avocados and…
Two Poems & Advertisement by Jackie Craven

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Edited version of a public domain advertisement The circus has a new address~Ringling Bros. to close ‘greatest show’… The elephants left long ago—Linked snout to tail, theyplodded over to the Capitol dome and now themonkeys follow, swinging from legislative branches.Rounding the beltway, bears on unicycles lead a…
Poetry: “say something” by Ananda Lima

for your safety ifyou see somethingsay a package apurse say somethingthat should not bethere unattended saysomething laughingas they say somethingyou don’t understandsay somethingscribbling somethingyou don’t understandsay something youdon’t understand saysomething thatshould not besomething for yoursafety say somethingceasing to besomething for yoursafety if you seesomething thatshould not be Ananda Lima’s work has appeared in The American Poetry…