her father said it was his favorite thing about her, that she was a hunter, like he is. she holds its head up for the picture. she wears an orange hat. now the deer unfolds from itself like the for...
Homage to Veneto
There is no status quo in politics. Things really do fall apart, to quote the overly quoted Yeats. For those of us born after WWII, the seven decades of Pax Europa and subsequent founding of the Eu...
FOB by Daniel Ford
An excerpt of the debut novel Sid Sanford Lives! by Daniel Ford Sid stepped into the desert surrounding the cramped forward operating base just as the sun surged over the distant mountaintop. He sc...
New Poetry: “What Great Grief Has Made the Civilian Mute” by Jennifer Murphy
To watch soldiers load into planes on television To ignore veterans who manage to make it home To cry out when an airman murders four of your friends To never question the valiance of combatants To...
Exit West and Dark at the Crossing: Two Novels of Syrian Refugees
It has been a long six and a half years since the Arab Spring, the popular movement of early 2011 that toppled dictators and challenged regimes across the Middle East. While Tunisia, Libya, and Egy...
Stalin’s Biography: For Serious Readers Only
Diving into an 850-page biography of one of the most monstrous and powerful men who ever lived is not something one does lightly. So it was with some hesitation that I opened the pages of Simon Seb...
New Poetry by WBT Editors
This special September Poetry & Fiction issue brings you poetry by WBT Editors Adrian Bonenberger, Drew Pham, and Matthew J. Hefti. Photo Credit: philmofresh Poetry by Matthew J. Hefti P...
Poetry: “A Beautiful Day to be Buried” by Julia Wendell
The sun was shining violently, as if on a mission to see beneath the surface of things. Our cortege wormed its way past row on row of identical white markers, the grounds immaculately groomed, (Not...
Excerpt from “Brave Deeds” by David Abrams
“Excerpted from BRAVE DEEDS © 2017 by David Abrams. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Black Cat, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. All rights reserved.” We walk, we walk,...
New Fiction: “East New York, After the War” by Gregory Brereton
I miss the fragrance of Polish women. I have not encountered anything quite like it. This tender unwashed grassy odor. Part stench, part hymn, evoking mysteries, bygone days, some kind of pa...
New Poetry by Maurice Decaul
U S Grant on the Disbanding of the Iraqi Army I heard thunder in the mountains witnessed soft amber lightening in the clouds saw in the saplings, & yearling whitetail, promise. When I reached o...
New Fiction from “Still Come Home” by Katey Schultz
The following is an excerpt from Still Come Home, Katey’s novel set in Afghanistan. A few weeks ago, it wasn’t the Taliban fighters’ movements that gave them away to Rahim, but their laughter...
On the Subject of Walls
While it’s fallen off the news somewhat, one of Donald Trump’s most conspicuous campaign-trail promises was to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Not only did Trump say that a wall was neces...
Poetry: “Last Night I Prayed for Rain” by Mary Carroll Hackett
solstice moon rising early, joining me to wait for the short night, long sun. Last night I prayed for love, for what there is to be won in the soaking, the drenching, the washing away. Last night I...
New Fiction: “The List” by Andria Williams
Author’s note: I began this story in 2013, but eventually set it aside because I feared it would seem unrealistic, or possibly even quaint, to write a story about a Facebook group formed to exploit...
Is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five an Anti-War Book?
Pop Quiz Which famous veteran author said the following? “An anti-war book? Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?” If you said Kurt Vonnegut, you’re one hundred percent, absolutely, ove...
In Defense of Writing Modern Epic
At some point during my education, I developed a powerful sense of skepticism toward the Epic. Every literary or cinematic attempt to tell the story of a nation on behalf of the nation ended up ove...
New Poetry by Yael Hacohen
Fortitude Seven times I’ve been to the Wall to scribble my prayers and fold them into the seams in the yellow stones. The walls of Jericho fell on the seventh so I elbow my way through the cr...
Arms Sales, Cash, and Losing Your Religion
The lucrative Arms Sales market exists in the exact place where rational self-interest intersects with humanist idealism. Much as individuals have a right to exist, countries have a right to exist,...
New Fiction: “Old Wounds” by Therese Cox
The YouTube walkthroughs have names, like action movies or episodes of a serial TV show. Judgment Day. Suffer With Me. Fallen Angel. Old Wounds. If you were playing, you’d fire up your console, scr...
John Berger, Max Sebald, Teju Cole: International Men of Culture
I think it was Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese author and filmmaker, who talked of the writer being the voice of the voiceless. That is still true in all societies. Art should ignite our dreams for...
New Poetry by J.J. Starr
Concerning whether or not I am a horse I strap torso & press arms to diaphragm with breath deep the distressed voice of mistress mumbles wishes amid plum trees & white headlight bum-rushes ...
Tomorrow Ever After: A Kinder Future
Here on Wrath-Bearing Tree we write a lot about ways in which things are imperfect—culturally, politically, institutionally. We often point out examples of things that go wrong. People who lie or u...
Resistance Dispatches: Foreign and Domestic
Every American soldier takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies. Since I left the service, I wondered who those enemies truly were. Once, I thought they were those d...
Fiction: “Float” by Teresa Fazio
What I really want to say, Alma, is how Remy looked on the beach that first night, his teeth perfect in the glow of the phosphorescent kelp, but I can’t tell him that right now, and maybe after thi...
Dispatch: Istanbul, Spring 2017
I found myself in Istanbul late March on a 17-hour layover; my ultimate destination being a small island off the coast of Venezuela. I figured that while I was in the “Gate of Felicity” I had some ...
Poetry: “Departure” & “Respite” by Justice Castaneda
Departure Once upon a time, I know I had a plan. Going to come back, finish the conversation. Keep all of the promises, About how it all connected and why There was so much there To dream. &...
The Dictator Novel in the Age of Trump
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit.” Chinua Achebe Of the thousand and one reactions of ...
New Fiction from “The Midnight Man” by David Eric Tomlinson
The sousetrap north of the courthouse is one of those expensive, contrived places doing its best to look like a dive—sawdust on the floor, animal pelts on the walls, microbrews on tap—and its patro...
Such Modest Proposals, And So Many
Most schoolchildren in the English-speaking West read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in high school or college. Since its publication in 1729, A Modest Proposal has become a staple of English l...
Noble Accounts: American War Stories, American Mothers, and Failed American Dreams
In the social history of our country, the current cultural moment may seem particularly conducive to division, denial and fear. But in his 1962 essay “As Much Truth as One Can Bear,” James Baldwin ...
Poetry: “Nostos” by T. Mazzara
i. the deadweight of a crooked hook we crossed any strange boundary in our youths. all amongst some hitch in what aught-wise (or maddenin) might normally be tattooed the standard trajectory of a se...
New Poetry by Randy Brown
Toward an understanding of war and poetry, told (mostly) in aphorisms Poetry is the long war of narrative. Poetry, like history, is subjective. If journalism is the first draft of history, poetry i...
New Fiction – “Iqbal” by Dan Murphy
Across the eight-lane roadway from the observation post was a gas station where Iraqis waited for days, siblings and cousins trading shifts and standing guard, eyeing the other clans and tribes. Pi...
J.M. Coetzee: The Master of Cape Town
South African-born writer John Coetzee is one of the most decorated and celebrated living writers. He has won the Nobel Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and was the first two-time winner of the Booker P...
1917: Ukraine’s First Bid to be Independent
This February marks the 100 year anniversary of an event that transformed Europe, brought the US into WWI, and nearly led to the destruction of capitalism. While it seems farfetched from the perspe...
Sebastian Junger with WBT’s Drew Pham on “Tribe”
How can a society so disconnected from its wars welcome back its fighting women and men? What do we lose when we privilege individuality over collectivity? WBT Writer Drew Pham joined in ...
Hierarchy and Americans, A Long Love Affair
We have leaders, in the USA, it's always been that way. I don’t believe in some magical, fairyland communal or egalitarian America that was free from hierarchy. The settlers who occupied ...
The Long March Ahead: A Veteran’s Place in Resistance
The day after the election felt all too familiar. It felt like 9/11. Then, as now, that day only promised a long road ahead. The years that followed, I dreaded a war I felt duty bound to fight. I w...
The Sellout by Paul Beatty: A Review
Shortly after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize was awarded to fellow American Paul Beatty for his novel The Sellout. It seems Americans are having a moment in the world...
Against NATO: The Other Side of the Argument
Since 1989-1991 when every country in the USSR or the Warsaw Pact (save Russia) jumped ship at the earliest opportunity, reasonable people have asked the question: why does the North Atlantic ...
Why Does the Universe Exist and Other Things We Cannot Know
Philosophy used to be the king of science. Hard to imagine now, but it’s true. Over the last few centuries, however, the divide between science and philosophy has grown larger and more irreco...
Last Week This Week 9-25-16
Wrath /ræθ/ noun 1 : strong vengeful anger or indignation (chiefly used for humorous or rhetorical ef...
The Italian Front in WWI: Bad Tactics, Worse Leadership, and Pointless Sacrifice
During this ongoing centenary of the First World War, interest in “The War to End All Wars” has returned, especially in the form of articles and essays. In the English-speaking world, this is almos...
Punk! Last Week This Week: 9/11 Music Edition
On 9/11–Punk, Protest, and Witness: WBT Editors Choose Their Jams There was a chance, in 1991, for the US to take a responsible role in leading the world into the 21st century. Rather than do...
Crazy Horse and the Legacy of the American Indian Genocide
Recent news articles about coal pollution in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, and protests against new pipelines in North Dakota by the Standing Rock Sioux caught my eye. I’m an arden...
Last Week This Week 8-28-16
Wrath /ræθ/ noun 1 : strong vengeful anger or indignation (chiefly used for humorous or rhetorical ef...
World War Two Never Ended
World War Two never ended. It sounds like the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel, right? Either the bad guys won, or the good guys didn’t win, and either way, history as we know it isn’t rig...
Dunkirk: the Bravest British Retreat
Whatever one might think about the United Kingdom’s recent behavior toward Europe—its antagonism toward the European Union, willingness to undermine international markets, and everlasting search fo...
Last Week This Week 6-7-16
Wrath /ræθ/ noun 1 : strong vengeful anger or indignation (chiefly used for humorous or rhetorical ef...