Tag: HFR Archives

Fiction by Claire Hopple: “A Catalogue of Leavings”

The situation really started to seem desperate after the death of a fake plant. Its fabric elephant ears were found shorn straight down the middle, fuzzy with the crosshatching of thread at the break. We knew maintaining a real one would be too much for either one of us, so this had seemed like a…
Poetry by C.T. McGaha: “2 Blessed 2 Be Stressed”

the older i getthe harder it getsto believe in mydarkest heart ofhearts that chekhov’sgun was everloaded. take a look at thatsalamander atthe parkscurryingacross the monkeybars and tell methat the sun‘ll still risein the eastwhen i die. C.T. McGaha is a writer from Charlotte, North Carolina. He founded and co-edits Vanilla Sex Magazine. His work has…
Two Poems by Joe Milazzo

Yaphet Kotto Stardust doesn’t matter when you’re WillRobinson-ed in the cleft of the leading man’schin, this rift tantamount to a laser show itselfthe envy of the shock and awe dropping its nothinglike nothing under the sun. Meanwhile,what would the sun’s shadow look like, I wonder,panning for lens flares in the unmappedfolds of this hurtling doom…
“Joe West’s Brother”: A Short Story by Siamak Vossoughi

The beautiful thing about fighting fascism, eighty-nine-year-old Joe West was saying, is that if you die, you die on the side of every work of art ever created, even the bad ones, you die on the side of every book and every song and every painting, and every one of them belongs to you now…
Prose Poem: “distant constricted arteries” by Jim Warner

—even still, the shoe polish sky’s chicken and beneath it we are racing towards abandoned storefronts. Pop promise from blister pack. The foil backing is a silver thumbprint, is a sentence fragment, is a mission accomplished, is the remainder left on a passenger seat. Rumbling gulp. Dry swallows. You are not a choking victim. There…
“Elk Splat,” a poem by Taneum Bambrick

The canyon the river ran through was bowl shaped & you could see from the water sometimes sheep on its rim. Our boat noise would collect in one wall and spill over the ledge of the next. That must’ve been what happened—a jet ski, for example, cutting through the middle of the gorge can sound…
Three Poems by Heikki Huotari

Guiding God At God’s request, I throw the ball. God brings the ball back wet. I palm the ball and swing my arm. God searches where He thinks the ball should be. The evening and the morning are the seventh day. God watches closely and I say, Remember, God, what happened last time, but of…
“More Fish Than Man,” a short story by Marcus Pactor

My cousin and I once fished under an interstate where a bent leg of swamp lay exposed and easy to approach. Its water was nothing to drink but it held plenty to eat. We caught a couple catfish inside half an hour. Then this not legendarily-sized gator but gator nonetheless came after his cork. My…
Poetry by MK Chavez: “You Can’t Spank the Monkey Forever, the Monkey Hates It”

Like porn, casual sex will eventually get boring. If the person you’re considering having sex with makes you feel dirty and ashamed before penetration, imagine how it will feel once your heart is harpooned and a mere figurehead on a prow. Everyone can be a unicorn if they stop being a dick. If someone has…