Category: The Last Word

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

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…
Essay: “Do You Still Love Me If I’m White?” by Sonja Johanson

In the days immediately after the election, many of us were shocked, grieving, enraged, and struggling with the knowledge we had, for too long, been silent as our friends, neighbors, and family members took sides with bigotry. One of the first acts for many was to take to social media and declare sides publicly, announcing…
Three Poems by Sergio A. Ortiz

A Wolf “I know there’s something better down the road.We need to find a place where we are safe.”—from “Praise Song for the Day,” by Elizabeth Alexander passed by my eyesleaving his footstepsin my veins.Stealthy and hungry,he stalked the cityscrutinizing the future.Today the shutters are closedbecause in this poemthere’s a wolfcoming to get me.Even when I…
Poetry: “The Force” by Danielle DeTiberus

Generations of boys whacking offin bedrooms and basements, imaginingthemselves one of three men inside a juiced-up worm frothing at the gold bikiniprincess. Metal cold on so much bareflesh that even the married, middle-aged cad can’t help himself to a taste betweentakes. But what of Carrie, nineteen and nowomen around to shrug at, to roll her…