Category: The Last Word

Fiction: Ryder Collins’ “The weeds is us”

Not the fates or the furies but they flew in bad asses just the same. The land was already writhing roiling burning fighting so you’d think no one would notice these bitches blowing in but … everything stopped. Everyone stopped biting, peeing, fucking, eating, snoring, snorting, dicking; every sweat pore stopped sweating, every bead of…
Poetry: “As I Play a Drinking Game for the Final Debate, Cheering for Empathy” by Olatunde Osinaike

the rules: take a shot any time either candidate interrupts the other take a shot any time the Donald brings up the wall or yours take a shot every time Trump points to the polls to break them down again takes shot take a shot every time Hillary anxiously chuckles the debate back into one…
Fiction: “Dear Editor” by Paul Beckman

Dear Editor, Please cancel our subscription. I can no longer have your newspaper lying around where my children can read the “Letters to the Editor” advocating same-sex marriage, separation of church and state, atheist rights, teaching of sex education in school, locations where free condoms are dispensed, transgender studies (whatever they are), school book lists…
Two Poems by Ruth Baumann

In Absentia The hard part is the thickening of bones, the rebuildingwhat only existed ever in a system of impulse say say you want a cigaretteten years later say the elements that bind youto your old self hold the light flick it on easy everythingeverything it says used to come easy once you…
Poetry: “The River Holds the Ghost Ship Through Her Grief” by Amanda Oaks

There’s a sparseness of the tongue / a not-quite-what-I-mean / all of the time, I mean. / b/c it’s a fact / the word is not the thing— / but why? / i’d ask the sky / but it’s only / S-K-Y. … I ask you / how can the universe fit / between /…
Fiction: “Roll for Damage” by Hannah Thurman

We cared deeply that people thought we didn’t care what people thought about us. We all wore black T-shirts during Spirit Week’s “white T-shirt day.” Of course we all had black T-shirts. As members of Carmichael High School’s Sci-fi Club (pronounced “skiffee”), we printed our own black T-shirts each fall with the year on them…
Poetry: “Laurentian” by Ashely Adams

I want to be cinders and paddle-wake,birth-warm to the touch. But I am not a metal vein,and this sea who plays at youth—trapped in August or October.It doesn’t matter when: the storm always white-cap scales and copper-greenbleeding fangshook and drag mepast sturgeon’s diamonds. Down, down to the kingdom of 32 degrees.Thrones of ore-sunk ship,a crown…
Poem & Song: “Darkness Fell” by Nancy Christensen King & Alani Keiser

Darkness Fell (Poem by Nancy Christensen King) “Darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night,But as if the lamp had been put out in a dark room,”Wrote Pliny the YoungerAcross the Bay of Naples, a witness to the doom. At the foot of Mount Vesuvius, Italian souls laid toilBuilding on the mountainside to…
Thirteen Comics from Hello Mussolini: Carl Dimitri

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Fascie Why Satan Gonna Put Them on a Train He Only Played One on TV I Believe Exxon Mobile So Proud of You, Son They Booed the VP Voted Myself Out We Finally Get the Authoritarian Regime Real News Is Not to Be Trusted I Have My…