Category: The Last Word

Original Fiction: “Irish Setter” by Travis Flatt

Mrs. Withers wants to repeat our conversation. Mrs. Withers corners me in the hall. In body language, Mrs. Withers is illiterate. I edge away from Mrs. Withers. “Mrs. Withers” might not be Mrs. Withers’ name, so I’m careful not to call Mrs. Withers “Mrs. Withers.” My father, Mrs. Withers seems to think, and I share…
Poetry: “Ode to Broken Birthdays and an Empty High Noon Can” by Samantha Cross

I don’t know if it was the combined birthday partiesWith the Daytona 500 for Alex and me as children,Or being told to shut up when I playedMy saxophone that fateful night in sixth grade.Maybe it was the standardized testing that took placeThe first week of March in Connecticut,Where the governorFailed to recognize the importanceOf in-class…
“The Bread of Life,” a new short story by Katherine Plumhoff

You start by thanking your lovers. You acknowledge the lessons they taught you, spreading gratitude over your history like dry rub over a roast. You thank Carlos, who taught you how to be positive in the face of something frustrating, i.e. having to pay for three places of accommodation—room in Valencia, rental house in Greece,…
Poetry: “First Act of a Movie Where I Loved You the Entire Time” by Angela Sun

for dad ESTABLISHING SHOT. Flowers purpling in the dying light like fingers. Our house flushed with the smell of something sweet. IN THE HALLWAY. You, walking into the shape of this silence— white as bones in the lightning of cracks on the soles of your shoes Where are you? This place smuggles echoes into the…
Poetry: “on fictional suburbs” by evelyn bauer

Some beast prowls in this place, lurking around stacks of unused newspaper & hiding behind the corners, shrouded by the broken electric streetlights, still unfixed. The familiar stench of iodine wafts down streets & up stairways, the tarmac melting in summer sun. Watch a newt scurry & slink in the wet earth, a flash of…
“shattered,” a poem by Carina Solis

it’s like we’re flickering, burst lamplights smirking in the dark. faces gaunt, we lounge on a half-shaded stairway, the moon and its smile hanging over our emptiness, crooked as burnt cigarettes. we pant smoke into the horizon and watch haze cut into our skin: all we taste is desperation. in the play of our lives, the night is a blackened man with…
Fiction: “My Dinner with a Thief” by David Luntz

I was looking for something for my wife I couldn’t afford. That’s when I first saw her. A younger-looking version of my wife. A customer had left a diamond brooch on the glass top and she pocketed it like a Three-card Monte pro. Her gray eyes clocked mine and said: No one likes a snitch.…
Poetry: “Sky Burial” by Summer J. Hart

In my dream about water, I hover over a starless nothing, refusing to go in. Refusing to let tomorrow turn out like today. Sky broke. White plate. Picking porcelain out of the carpet. The phone rings. Rain churns the southwest corner of the basement into mud. In my dream about water, the waves swallow the…
“[UNTITLED LOVE SONG],” an acrostic poem by Jess Yuan

Favorite observer, how youUndulate between a blue loud emptiness and thisCeiling which shelters andKeeps the perimeter defined Throughout and beneathHeaping insight upon insight until it compactsEnriches, densifies, coagulates into Prediction for the built worldArtifact of its struggle, puddled.That’s my anxiety about establishingRelationships. I worry the Investment is seen byAll. I worry theRecording sounds like I know…