Last Words

Issue 36 (Spring 2025)

MÍO CIUDAD by Nuala McEvoy

We wanted to bookend this year’s pair of issues with Last Words, not to offer a heavier, more somber counterweight to our First Words edition, but to honor the beauty and meaning that comes with the weight of endings. There are endings herein—of childhood, of friendships, of lives lived well and lives full of longing—many of them heavy with the weight of what has gone. But there are beginnings to be found in these pieces as well, moments of hope, sparks and hints of what might live in that quiet space that comes after an end, even if only in the reassurance that there will be something after. We are grateful for these last words and for the firsts that preceded them and all of the firsts and lasts that will follow. We are happy to share our beginnings with you and our endings. We hope you find something you will want to keep in the caesura between the two and we are excited for all that might come after.

– Travis Cohen, Editor-in-Chief

Fiction

Floridian Beauty

by Bryce Taylor Floridian Beauty We were Orlando boys. Our seasons marked by the changing of sports. The autumnal colors of football fields with their pom-poms and helmet-berries, the shining…

Fiction

Cave Dwelling

by M.C. Schmidt Cave Dwelling At dinner parties, they would say it was the economy that drove them to live in an undersea cave. The parties were at the homes…

Fiction

Shards

by Laurin Becker Macios Shards The floor is cold but spotless outside Annie’s open door. I spread myself over it, salted butter on toast, her childhood favorite. You’re losing it,…

Fiction

Late Blooming Rita

by Justine Busto Late Blooming Rita Nothing was useless to Aunt Rita. When a light bulb sputtered out, it went in a box, along with wool socks, key chains, balls…

Fiction

Stay With Me for a While

by Jordan Nishkian Stay With Me for a While In the silence of Corinne’s home, I lie on her living room floor, gaze pinned to the vaulted ceiling. I take…

Poetry

Pillow

by Ben Gunsberg Pillow You deserve more than just enough morphineto halter the red-eyed mare. More than this clean, plush thing your head imprints post-splitand exorcism of lymph nodes. More…

Poetry

Fingers

by James Long Fingers Always first to arrive, like armies or spring rain, their conversations with the invisible mind frighten me: how fast they could grab a glovebox flask or…

Poetry

Say Talaq for Me

by Kurt Olsson Say Talaq for Me       After the Russian folk song “Миленький ты мой”(“My Darling”) May your nipples grow weedyas a lunatic’s beard. May the windows in your…

Poetry

Sarah

by Ivy Raff Sarah Poet Ivy Raff is the author of What Remains (Editorial DALYA forthcoming 2025), winner of the Alberola International Poetry Prize, and Rooted and Reduced to Dust…

Poetry

Burial

by Homa Mojadidi Burial If I was there      I could’ve cradled his fallen bodyWiped his blood with      the hem of my dressSmoothed his raven-like hair      placed a final kiss upon his foreheadMemorized the…

Poetry

Phantom Sting

by Arianna Miller Phantom StingWith a line by Sandra Cisneros What’s love? A brickthrough a windshield; it’s a crimeto be full of passion. And how do we justify it? The weight…

Poetry

Catalysis

by Dan Berick Catalysis When I die, I would like to becomeYeast in a rising ball of dough. Sugar to eat, no thoughts,No dreams.Making my little bubblesOf useful gas. Rise,…

Poetry

Delicious

by Lexi Pelle Delicious The cashier checks to see if any eggs in the carton are crackedbefore carefully setting it back on the conveyor belt. A mother lays the smooth…

Poetry

Mend

by Yoda Olinyk Mend                  I am fifteen. I am not stumbling through a cornfield alone                   at six a.m. I am not plasteredwith vomit. My lips                   are not a swollen gate. My underwear …

Poetry

Woman Peeing in a Barn

by Han VanderHart Woman Peeing in a Barnafter Emmet Gowin (1971) is Edith Gowin, the photographer’s wife is backlit by summer is holding her white cotton gown up is hands…

Poetry

Anti-Elegy

by Jonathan Aibel Anti-Elegy Beyond the scrim, do the deadremember?  If so, let her remember some other child,the one she wanted, a girl, too good to writeon walls, who didn’t…

Translation

I Watch the Night Burning

from Testamentum (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2021)by Efraín BartoloméTranslation by Cynthia Steele I watch the night burning The vast sky is one A uniform throbbing of starsseems to sing in…

Creative Nonfiction

Ghosting

by Michele Alouf Ghosting As a child, I sang Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” with my mom and brothers as we drove home in her canary-yellow Cordoba…

Creative Nonfiction

Phantom Pain

by Michael Chin Phantom Pain I thought autobiography might afford me immortality. Facile as it seems now, the idea felt profound. After all, each time I immersed myself in the…

Creative Nonfiction

Ladies Lazari

by Anna Swann-Pye Ladies Lazari Two months ago, I wrote an essay about the death of my dog and subsequent loss of a pregnancy. I compared forms of grief, thought…

Hybrid

Peaceful Coexistence

by Chrissy Kolaya and Nathan Holic Author Chrissy Kolaya is the author of one novel, Charmed Particles (Dzanc Books) and two books of poems: Other Possible Lives and Any Anxious…

Editing Staff for Issue 35:

Faculty Advisor: Denise Duhamel

Editor-in-Chief: Travis Cohen

Assistant Managing Editor: Michael Cuervo

Fiction Editor: Matthew Young

Poetry Editor: Cayla Garman

Creative Nonfiction Editor: Michael Rojas

Hybrid Editor: Bryane Alfonso

Translations Editor: Kamila Izquierdo

Readers: Brittney Acosta, Griffin Cornwell, Brittany Crosse, Zachary Granat, Ethan Hill, Ericka Hodge, AJ Leigh, Joyce Englander Levy, Carlos Martin, Natalia Martinez, Ranijun Ruado, Sophia Tirado, Kevin Triana

Cover Artist Nuala McEvoy is an artist of English/Irish origin. She started submitting her artwork to literary magazines in 2024, and her art now appears or will appear in around fifty reviews as features or as cover art. She currently has an exhibition of 40 pieces in Cavendish Venues, London.