Category: The Last Word

“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…
Three Poems by Estelle Bajou

Some of Us Are Born Some of us give birth to ourselvesOn the edge of the reservoirWhere you can hear the ice meltI was looking at the mountain behind your faceThinking of you crunching through miles of quiet trees,Thinking of the world without me, forWho has not sat terrified before the heart’s curtainSaying don’t you…
Flash Fiction: “Going In” by Kim Farleigh

“I was able,” James said, “to ignore it until yesterday; but last night, it was just impossible.” Sitting on his bed’s edge, he shook his head. I was lying on another bed, my head on a pillow, his head slowly shaking. A ceiling light turned our room’s window black. A vehicle’s drone outside rose then…
“My Mother Has Many Tricks”: Flash Fiction by Sacha John Bissonnette

In one of Grandma’s stories, she found my mother in the backyard, middle of the night, a blood-soaked possum neatly wrapped around her arm, like she had killed one before. She refused to let it go, letting out a feral shriek as Grandma got closer. My mother only dropped the possum when Grandma could reach…
“Same Green”: A Short Story by Lucciana Costa

If you stay: if you stay, it will kill you. You will wither, shrink, shrivel up like a slug in salt. Your brain will leak out your ears if you hear Braden Jenkins call Owen Meany a faggot one more time, his desk just far enough away to be out of physical reach. Not that…
“Hands”: Poetry by Tam Nguyen

On March 16, 2021, a white gunman committed mass shootings in the Northern suburbs of Atlanta, United States, resulting in the deaths of 8 people, 6 of whom are Asian women. Show me your hands. Should you know there’re Ways to make the world tender? —More than the pairs of hands That corked a…
Four Poems by Sarah Cavar

POV: Asking my clinician what he will get me (free) My doctor foots an opening too small for me.A catholic chamber, tabernacle tight. Beast-abreastIn steady follow.Satan’s like a tabby fat these days, a six of furringpounds and ribs and ounces. A pussynot the coward-kind or catBut like the act of snatching. eating poem dishes on…
Three Poems by Lisandra Perez

How to Be Happy Consider this: buy a straw hat (maybe two), toss a bag over your shoulder,and walk west where dusk settles on mountains that become line drawings.Move to Montana where sweat beams multiply as hands massage tomatoseeds into the dirt. Gently push the hair from your face. Consider a ponytail and walk west…