Category: The Last Word

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

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…
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…