Category: The Last Word

Fiction: “Sarcophagy at Mar-a-Lago” by Derick Dupre

You’ve never seen a colder bunker. Of course I got this rigged with a.c., naturally the best and coldest, ice cold as the backseat of your grandma’s cadillac. There’s nothing fresher than what’s here I guarantee it. This is one of the finest examples of civil defense on the entire globe and that’s including Antarctica,…
Two Poems by torrin a. greathouse

& so i am writing another poem about gravestones which is to say, i am writing about destinations & not that we don’t all end up there, eventually, but i have watched far too many of us arrive to heaven, anxious & far too early as if it were a party, & we invited only…
Poetry: “Ass” by Diane DeCillis

Tremulous gibbous moons,sand dunes of the body’s terrain,I’m talking double bubble entendre—not smart ass, the know-it-all,the wiseacre—more cheek to cheek,a tango as it were, the stuff of rumba,samba, mambo—parallelyet unparalleled in synonymy. Call it: buttocks, butt, booty, behind, backside,bum, buns, bedonkadonk, arse, can, cheeks,hind-end, haunches, heinie, keister, glutes,rump, gluteus maximus (or minimus) tail feather,rear, junk-in-the-trunk,…
Poetry: “Ni Hao to You Too” by Dorothy Chan

A white man says “Ni hao” to meas I wait for my Las Vegas flight.I can’t look at him though he’s now sitting next to me with his ni hao nervesince he thinks he’s so progressivespeaking Mandarin in his hunting outfit but doesn’t he know that anyonewho’s seen a Rosetta Stone commercialor been to EPCOT…
Essay: “Binge-Watching White Feminism” by Samantha Duncan

November 9 Rory Gilmore cries tears of shock into her coffee, because so much hate exists in the world that didn’t exist before. She knows, she’s searched all of Stars Hollow, including Jess’s coat pockets. First snow is soon. A different scarf and matching hat for each day of the week. Coffee and doughnuts to…
Three Inaugural Poems by jacklyn janeksela

human morality is a distant planet, a fading star from a distance, a bomb-pop is meltingsomeone licks the drippings, but not meand not anyone i know, they swallow like pornstars, hum all the way down ona star-bangled banner, gag on poverty, the heel of bread toughenedlike skins of pigs and patriots and people, yespeople, rather…
Essay: Stacia M. Fleegal’s “How to really watch the borders”

When she won most of the votes but still lost the election, some of the students at the college where I work were devastated and some were not. I gave up hiding my mascara smudges by nine thirty in the morning because the first defiance of misogyny is I’m not here to look good for…
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…