Category: The Last Word

Terri Drake: Five Poems

Legend She offered her bodyas the world’s terrain.The smooth skin and the scars. She closed the curtainsand put a finger to her lips. She baked breadso we wouldn’t have to live on air. She made of the earth a giftand placed it at our feet. She sent out the dogs as sentinels.They came home to…
Six Poems by A. Martine

i have my own problems i stop telling everyone i’m a good listener people profess they miss mebefore i clock the sentiment i askwhat did you losewhat is wrongwhat is it from me that you need i’m sorrygoodwill has again done a number on mei don’t want to take or be taken care ofi want…
“girls against god,” an ekphrastic poem by sterling-elizabeth arcadia

after annihilation (2018) remember how you cheated on heavenstared that alligator-angel in its eye & shot it dead? how your vertebrae surged with joyshimmered against the skin of your spine. he left you between dark walls& corrupting light—heaven-sent heaven gone to be in the south. with the silent wateramong those crystal trees. & when your…
“Lurking,” a short story by Tam Nguyen

For P.A, C*, J, P, D, and friends The campus’ hallway remained silent since the university’s closure earlier this year. Education was halted after the coup took over. As soon as different parts of the country slowly turned into battlefields, faculties and students got together and constituted a union, partially to create a self-didactic community,…
“the silence feat. uranus, neptune,” a poem by Michael Russell

in the new dubfor season 3 of sailor moon, the outer guardiansuranus & neptune are lovers who came from the coldestpocket in space, the unstitched hem of our galaxy.their mission: to burn through the silenceglaive pressed against the thin cherry blossomof a human throat. their throats, maybe—ours? boyfriend, on a crowded street how many planets…
Four Poems by Joel Anthony Harris

Prince Varmint Stops a Viking Siege I’ll never forget the Bastille Day, how it stormed the countrytown like a kettle of vultures. Yeomen toiled in fallow fields hacking the soil with their harrows.From the north hailed a drab dragonship that fiddled the still moat.There he was the wretched sprite, the scoundrel: Sam the Terrible!His eyes were…
Excerpt from SCARLET: Three Glitched Still Lives by Francesco Levato

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. SCARLET is a digital visual/poetic meditation on the fractured state of psyche induced by extended social isolation under COVID-19 lockdown. The digital/visual poems are created through erasure of the novel The Scarlet Plague collaged with glitched imagery from everyday life in lockdown. The titles of poems in…
“Cordyceps,” a flash essay by Sher Ting

Did you know cordyceps colonizes the bodies of carpenter ants, chemically hypnotizing them to ascend to the highest point in the environment before releasing a mushroom cloud of spores? I have been told a hundred useless facts, with bread and a butter knife on the train to Oslo. The man next to me, knotted in…
“Floating Lessons,” a love poem by Levi Cain

i love you atlantic oceani love you dog beach in februaryyour hair swirling in the wind all perfumei love you arboretum in all seasonsi love you defiant sprout of armpit hairi love you half-smothered squawk at dirty jokes,your eyes like two galaxies backflipping into a black hole full of molassesi love you kiss the size of an…