Tag: HFR Archives

Two Poems by Conor Bracken

Running After Years My gait’s a mistake my feet keep making.Allow me to introduce myself: an unbridled trot.A hotel quietly on fire and the guestsasleep, dreaming of cleaner sheets.Of forgetting their phone chargersand overtipping the chambermaidsfor messes of deferred responsibility.My lungs inveigh their circuitry with air.What unhappiness propels the sunto punish everything with shadows?I once…
“Both the Substance and the Evidence,” a short story by Elise Burke

On the Sundays Harlow convinced me go to church, I never really listened to the sermon. But certain phrases stuck out. Maybe the pastor made sense of it all but I was caught up staring at Dot across the congregation as he held his jittery wife’s hand. Her legs bounced around nervously like God was…
Poetry: “Necessary Facilities Improvements” by Patrick Williams

Here’s the gougey bodega,the graying gym shoe power lines,sloping toward what televisiontells me is our drug corner. Out front I ghosted throughthe earliest blossoms of an uglyfistfight and didn’t look backuntil I knew it was over. Yards away a wet sweatshirtcloaked a cat’s corpse for mostof a winter, until they vanished:first the sweatshirt, then the…
“Terms of Non-Communication,” a ficton story by Ani Katz

I. Terms of Non-Communication 1. The parties agree not to attempt communication until the agreed-upon date. 2. In the event that either party believes to possess news that is critical to the other party, the newsholder shall seek a mutually trusted liaison to relay the news. 3. In the event that either party feels an…
Three Poems by M. Ann Hull

This Isn’t An Era for Adoring the unborn fingers of a tea cupgripping to its chipped brimbrittle stembones shedding petalslike a dry red rain. Thick, thicketedromances & tiny eyelid-lickingglances were for the timid & the timidhave all gone, leaving bridges scrubbingstarlight from their steel. I could tellmy unborn daughter there was a timewhen a hand…
Three Poems by Kathleen Jones

The Appropriate Cold—for Amy Your death fell with a thud that bruised the rest of us.Now I’m homesick for a winter we can’t return to in a state I’ve long left and you rarely visited, the appropriate coldI don’t feel here. The Fleetwood, a metalbox diner nesting in snow, blue streetlit sidewalks on the approach,…
“Marvel,” a lyric essay by Jennifer H. Fortin

Why does it bother me when others marvel at what I don’t find wondrous? It has to do with naiveté, with undue congratulations. I feel bad every second of every day. Or it has to do with false enticement: they are trying, via Marvel, to elicit a dramatic reaction. I can’t believe x! Marvel as…
“An Important Message from a Mysterious Place,” poetry by Meredith Blankinship

If the haunting was a haunting you deservedhow do you expect to live withoutthe quietude of my displeasure? The facesthat show when the film gets developedharnessing all the fun of a lie to provesomething by transparency. When youput a light behind some ice, whenyou flick through with alabaster care.The scrolls are ancient but predictable.Who would…
“Notes from Toledo,” a micro-essay by Megan Martin

We got in a car and drove to Toledo. Toledo felt like bad news. I thought it was just your sister’s neighborhood where there were very few windows you could see through (bars, boards, broken glass, darkness), but those ghostly windows looked out at us everywhere we went. Their pit was raging at the door…