Category: The Last Word

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

Poetry: “God Responds [to the Proust Questionnaire]” by Jubi Arriola-Headley

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals [their] true nature. —Vanity Fair Where the typical journalistic interview tailors questions to the particular qualities of a subject, the Proust questionnaire’s unchanging…
Adam Day: Five Poems from Midnight’s Talking Lion and the Wedding Fire

Chile example 1973—Zurita arrested and held in ship’s cargo hold; process-experience under witnessing. He tried to disappear his eyes with acid, but failed. “Instead he created a document: chapter twentieth century having disfigured its face. Might not be quite right. Then, a photo of its bandaged cheek with the text below, EGO SUM, and: ‘My…
“Dol-lim Ja Imprints”: A Poem by Georgia San Li

Characters for the Next Generations One generation of heirloom tomatoes divides their eggs, bubbling with blisters, bloody broken stems in the end. How many precious pigeon-red rubies will man flood with fires and vengeance of war in the end? Who were the three African women in tangerine silks and golden slippers, rerouted at Charles De…
Original Poem by Caitlin Grace McDonnell: “Dear Wolf”

Dear Wolf, It’s been seven years. What happened in those woods is a story that keeps changing. Sometimes you are very large and toothsome. Sometimes you are a man in uniform. Sometimes you are my grandmother; sometimes, you are me, but smaller. Wolf, I can still see you behind that tree, poking out like a…
Three Poems by Elijah Rushing Hayes

For a long time I’m unhappy then I’m fine … I’m fuller than any moon.I’m made of cobalt hearts.I’m everything inside the multitude of another.Here I am inside my kitchen peeling an apple.The apple takes up the entire room.Wonderful living with you and seeing you.No, I let you sleep.Or why we love or what love…
New Poetry by Cloe Watson: “Mothers”

Remember when the sky fell below our feet,time wasting at the fringes? It became the cracks we stepped on in fear and joy, slipperyin their changing. Remember the clouds, love? How they became our stepping stoneswhen we had to go separate ways, the tall hill between our homes steep with longingand real monsters. As the…
Poetry by Lisa Zerkle: “I’m Stopped by the Black Pearl of Her”

An elegant weapon, she’s glossy,ballistic. Her legs, articulated.But it’s the shine I notice. Light glintsoff carapace though she’s tangled ina sticky mess, a catchall of deadleaves and insects I take for cobwebnear a potted shrub. The hydrangeathat has bloomed and faded though the daysstill blaze and rattlesnaking of cicadasrises from the oaks. Her abdomen’sa precise…
New Travel Nonfiction: “To the Burmese Monks Who Asked Why My Hair Was Cut Short” by Lindsey Danis

You were not the first monks I met in Thailand, but you were the only ones I bowed to with both hands pressed together at the chin to demonstrate respect. You were two together and we were together, two married women passing for straight, but you wondered about that in the way you eyed my…
New Hybrid Cento: “I Rewatch My Ex’s Favorite Film and Imagine Our Life Together” by Frances Klein

E—A cento of the Derek Jarman film Blue Once there are only two of us you set to work mapping the solemn geography of human limits. You are slow and deliberate, a dedicated cartographer. *** The empty book of a new year opens. I am the marble, you the sculptor. Your tool is a refined…