Category: The Last Word

Short Fiction: “Adrift” by Max Wheeler

Like so much in Hassan’s long life, this transition was something done to him, not by him. My mom sounded resigned when she called me the night before my monthly visit. Her husband had been changing in small ways for a while already. “Look, honey. I have to tell you something.” I could tell she’d…
Two Poems by Julian Mithra

Marooned by Organs[1] hooee bighorn or prongbucki’m fat for backs hunched against arctic. Beacham’s offcollecting buffalo pies to hold back toothache pain, a furrow for hide-hunters to finger when we runout of bulletsand spit hormone circles, panting, free rangethrough rabbitbrush lungsand cliffrose kidneys gait, the kind of country broken by ditches and ravinesand canteringas hard as anything bloodsoak,…
“An Absence You Recognize”: A Prose Poem by Radha Kai Zan

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Radha Kai Zan creates stories across different mediums. As a visual artist, they indulge in the aberrant and sensual, centering often on the body and its mutable, mortal nature. As a writer, their fiction skews towards the speculative with a particular interest in exploring the macabre, erotic,…
Three Poems by Paul Chuks

Self-Portrait with Less Anxieties Lord, I want to be Hollywood-cool.That young boy whose father ownsA company—and wills it over toHim at twenty-one.Once—I needed bread—I went to theBlock industry to mold some.Two coins they paid me—finishedafter the economy swallowed itduring my lunch time. Thenext day—I took a knife to mythroat in mistaking myself amartyr for capitalism.…
Two Poems by Anthony Robinson

Failures of the Poets Wyatt couldn’t keep count of his “numbrous vers”And when I mentioned this, a user said, “pronounced properly,They scan perfectly.” They do not, but as a rule,I’ve stopped arguing with old men. The shaggy poems,Derived from an old Italian, have their mincing charms,And for this he did not deserve hanging, nor beheading.It’s unfortunate…
Two Poems by Laura Minor

Big Dick, Small Town I Love You, Now Show Me Your Tits And just like that, the house of whores— If Sunday was a man, he’d be good, becomes the scourge of wooden hours— some digital acquaintance, a high, friend, superior, colleague, or mentor ruefully horny, delusional on their own back roads…
Essay: “The Box” by Diana Whitney

The box was waiting on my porch when I came home from acupuncture. Cardboard, square, criss-crossed with blue tape, big enough to fit a toaster or a cat. A stranger had sent me a package in the mail. I do not know this man, although he’d written my name and address in sharpie and his…
“Leaver,” a poem by Audrey King

of glasseson airplanes; papersat home; socks at the baseof beds; of cell phonesupstairs; of voicemails: hi honey,where the hell are you; of planets and bodiesand families and wives. When it tookto your body, grabbed hold; anchored;plummeted; ultimately surrendered the morphineonto you, did you strike? I imaginea stunned crow; talons chainedclose on your chest. But I…
“letters that linger,” a poem by Jen Schneider

of the moments.memories.meanderings a. the sound of silenceb. the taste of quietc. the feeling of safetyd. the color of warmthe. the flavor of peace that could have pressed, stamped, stomped, even tattooed themselves in inks (blue.black.red) & palettes (pink.yellow.green) on concealed palms, at the midnight hour, of rays of sun / grains of sand /…