Tag: HFR Archives

From Vol. 9: “Invasion of the Dad,” fiction by Nicholas Grider

The dad arrived, as dads are known to do, in a large red SUV that was partly covered in mud and made a confident exit from the vehicle, stepping down from the driver’s seat onto the blacktop in dark brown shoes dwelling somewhere between “sensible” and “noticeably expensive,” and the dad was dressed as if…
From Vol. 9: “Dear Editor Who Sent Me a Rejection Letter on Christmas, or Essay That Ends in a Fugue” by Sean Thomas Dougherty

At first I was like for real, man. Really? But then I immediately thought of my coworker Wayne, whose wife died a few years ago near Christmas, and what dismal days the holidays are for him, each colored light blinking on every house a stop light for this life, a demarcation, a calling back to…
From Vol. 9: “A Miniature Tale of Motherhood,” a short story by Oliver Zarandi

My children are cruel and look like goblins. Every day they take something away from me and I don’t ask for anything in return. I asked them this morning, “What do you want for lunch?” “Your breasts,” they said. So they had them. They suckled my teats, one apiece, and sucked them dry. No more…
From Vol. 9: Four Poems by Emily Blair

An IUD Is a Silver Bullet That Could Kill Me so I’m not taking recommendations at this time.Instead this body is as this body doessmoke sometimes. I quit and quit quitting. In the dark of a power outage,I live alone and lie awake in the silence of a thousand people panickinginside our little homes, 5…
Two Poems from The Future: Jessica Morey-Collins

The Day We Learned Most of us immediately pulled off our shoes and popped our shirt-buttons, released the thunder of our hearts to quarrel with the administration. The teenagers who found it had been up to teenage no-good—pushing each other in a stolen shopping cart, gulping begged beer and whooping through the sidewalked night. They…
Three Poems from The Future: Caely McHale

Mona Lisa My hands are the last human thing about me.I keep my fingernails pink.I arrange them soft like the Mona Lisa. I imagine delivering a baby, scaled and cold.Scoop the mucus from his throat!My hands are the last human thing about me. My brother’s hands have gone to shit,Dark and spotted from a magnified…
Two Poems from Vol. 10 by Michael Russell

i’ve never seen the ocean nightly, i dream itas open sore.my entire self, plummeting.an infection. the moon,scimitarof borrowed lightcutsinto the bruise— cerulean-wound,blood-saltmouthfuls. i am drowning in an inhumangalaxy. my lungs,unfit,this world—breathless. i’m not a fish.i hate to swim,this body—finless & withoutshark. my great white hearttornlike a scissored fin. love chums the waterwith rogue arms.my best…
Bards & Brews Reader, a 2016-17 anthology of series performers

BNB logo designed by Emily Weddle Table of Contents FICTION “Shangri La Dee Da” Dan Mancilla “Bigfoot’s Overcoat” Matthew Fogarty NONFICTION “Staff Meeting” “Rescue” “Scorpio, Born in the Year of the Cock” “Go, Jim Dandy” Ginny MacDonald Broadside Excerpt from “Field Notes” Josh MacIvor-Andersen POETRY “How to Skin a Rabbit” “Assembly Instructions for…
Seafaring Split, 2016 poetry chapbooks by Jessica Q. Stark and Kiley McLaughlin

Image: Josh Dorman, “Night Fishing II” Table of Contents \\\Side A///Jessica Q. StarkThe Liminal Parade “Strange Beasts”“Tissue Cultures in Auckland”“Epileptic Release Hounds”“Gizzard Stones”“Re: Pls Fwd All Future Arrangements” 2015 WinnerDouble Take Poetry PrizeSelected by Dorothea Lasky * \\\Side B///Kiley McLaughlinACTION PRAISE PRAISE “Action”“And Praise and Praise” 2015 Runner Up Double Take Poetry…