“You coming to work, New Guy?” Sailor asks, and I snarl at my nickname. Dude gives me the creeps—somehow they stuffed a three-hundred-pound bear who never blinks into a uniform. When the pla...
New Nonfiction from Tom Keating: “The Lobby”
I am careful with the coffee tray. It holds four coffees and one tea for my guys in the VA hospital lobby. Everyone who comes to the VA hospital spends time sitting in the lobby, waiting for a meet...
New Poetry by David Dixon: “Last Night, I Dreamed of the Korengal”; “Look at This Thing We’ve Made”; and “War Poetry”
New Poems by David Dixon: “Last Night, I Dreamed of the Korengal;” “Look at This Thing We’ve Made;” and “War Poetry”
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New Poetry by Cheney Crow: “The Grey Phone”
New poem by Cheney Crow: “The Grey Phone”
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New Interview from Larry Abbott: “The Visual Diary of Danish Soldier Henrik Andersen”
Art After War: The Visual Diary of Danish Soldier Henrik Andersen As the memory of U.S. participation in the Afghanistan War fades in the minds of most Americans (the report on the exit fiasco notw...
New Nonfiction by Krista Puttler: “Traversing the Gate of Tears”
Dubai is one gigantic, grey strip mall. “Does anyone know why they call this place Dubai?” I look away from my bus window. The tour guide sits on the edge of her seat in the front row, leaning into...
New Fiction from Steve Bills: “Bombing Pearl Harbor”
29 April 1971 From: Naval Science Department To: Midshipmen Second Class, Navigation and Piloting 301 (NAV 301) Subject: Final Navigation Project-Due: 1600 hours, 13 May, Luce Hall, Room 104 Master...
New Poetry by Joshua Folmar: “Sudoku”
New Poem by Joshua Folmar: Sudoku
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New Poetry by Lawrence Bridges: “Time of War and Exile” and “Taking an Island”
New poems by Lawrence Bridge: “Time of War and Exile” and “Taking an Island”
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New Poetry by Marty Krasney: “Where We Are Now”
New poem by Marty Krasney: “Where We Are Now”
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New Poetry by Matthew Hummer: “Amortization”
New poem by Matthew Hummer: “Amortization”
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New Poetry by Linnea George: “Course Correction”
New poem by Linnea George: “Course Correction”
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New Fiction by Bryan Thomas Woods: “Dirt and Bones”
Somewhere near the Hải Vân Pass, Vietnam, 1969 I found her body tangled among a thicket of vines on the jungle floor. Our patrol stopped for the night, and we were digging into our defensive positi...
New Nonfiction from Kevin Honold: “The People of Cain”
But vnto Kain and to his offering he had no regarde: wherefore Kain was exceeding wroth, and his countenance fell downe. —Genesis 4:5, Geneva Bible of 1560 From first light until long after ...
New Fiction by Sándor Jászberény: “Honey”
1. A rocket hit the village. I woke up to the sound of the explosion. My eyes widened, I jumped out of bed, put on my bulletproof vest, grabbed my helmet and boots and headed for the door. Another ...
New Nonfiction by Dean Hosni: “The Cartoon War”
October 6, 1973. Los Angeles. The stack of newspapers sat in front of me on the brown shag carpet, and next to it was a plastic bag half full of red rubber bands. I reached into the bag, took a doz...
New Poetry by Almyr Bump: “Plowing Water”
New poem by Almyr Bump: “Plowing Water”
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New Poetry by J.S. Alexander: “Sabat”
New Poem by J.S. Alexander: “Sabat (Loyalty)”
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New Fiction by Adrian Bonenberger: “King Tide”
We’d been expecting the fascists for a few days but they’d gotten hung up on Newark. Usually they moved fast. Camden had gone quiet just a week after the government had evacuated from Washing...
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Clock Strikes Twelve
My year-long run as guest-columnist for The Wrath-Bearing Tree comes to an end this month. I’m not sure if WBT founders Adrian Bonenberger and Mike Carson planned for my stint to last only twelve m...
New Poetry by D.R. James: “Surreal Expulsion”
New poem by DR James: Surreal Expulsion
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New Poetry by Pawel Grajnert: “Michigan”
New poem by Pawel Grajnert: Michigan
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New Fiction by J. Malcolm Garcia: “An Arrangement”
I escaped to America after my fiancé, Farhid, died. He was an officer in the Afghan National Army in Bagarm when he was killed by a roadside bomb. His friend Abdul called and told me the news. He a...
New Fiction by Jesse Rowell: “Second Skin”
Alpert Nelsen had lost a toe. He just didn’t know it yet. Not a big toe. One of the smaller ones. It got infected when he kicked a roll of fencing after his cameraman deleted the interview footage....
New Nonfiction by Larry Abbott: The Photographic Self-Portraits of Ron Whitehead
There Is No Such Thing as an Unwounded Soldier Ron Whitehead works in a variety of photographic series: Eye of the Storm are impressionistic visions of war to give a more dynamic view of combat th...
So Say We All and Wrath-Bearing Tree Collaborate!
In collaboration with So Say We All‘s Veterans Writing Division, founder Justin Hudnall and The Wrath-Bearing Tree‘s Andria Williams had the privilege of serving 21 veterans, active-dut...
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Great Contemporary War-Writing Quiz
30 questions; let’s see who knows their stuff. Answers below. 27-30 Correct: Expert 23-26: Sharpshooter 19-22: Marksman Less than 19: Bolo Ready, go! 1. “The war tried to kill us in the spr...
New Nonfiction from Ciel Downing: “Burn Baby Burn”
“Fire in the belly!” “Be all you can be!” “Get fired up!” Slogans to incite, ignite, excite and encourage living on the edge—the thrill of defying death on the pages of peril. “Fire in the hole!” ...
New Fiction by R.L. Peterson: “Rules of Dying”
Every work day morning at 8 o’clock sharp, me, Juan, Marcus, and Willard stand at attention with hands over our hearts while the national anthem plays on the loud speaker at Fort Rosecrans National...
New Fiction by Nancy Ford Dugan: “Flow”
So, Abe, the pleasant guy who buzzes you in every week at the bubbled-roof tennis facility, takes your thick wad of cash (he appreciates exact change) and makes the usual small talk: weather, recen...
New Poetry by Ben White: “Cleaning the M60 – 39 Years and January 26, 1984”
New Poetry by Ben White: “Cleaning the M60 – 39 Years and January 26, 1984”
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New Poetry by Kat Raido: “Blood Goggles”
New poem by Kat Raido: “Blood Goggles”
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Wild Delights: Patrick Hicks Interviews Brian Turner
Patrick Hicks: Brian Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon and taught English in South Korea for a year before he joined the United States Army. He served in Bosnia-Herzegovina ...
Peter Molin’s Strike “Through the Mask!”: Three Vignettes
Memoirs written by soldiers and Marines who fought in the Second Battle of Fallujah in Iraq and the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan portray many events that caused their authors anguish. Below I des...
New Fiction by Tim Lynch: “The Skipper”
It was a typical Thursday night at the Taj Tiki Bar, tucked away off the Jalalabad – Kabul road in the hamlet of Bagrami just outside of the Jbad city limits. The Tiki Bar at the Taj had been estab...
New Fiction by Todd Easton Mills: “When Beauty is Convulsive”
From his notebook, illustrated with a picture of a four-eyed flower: We live in a bungalow in Pasadena, California, where my father is a professor of physics at Cal Tech, and my mother is a plein a...
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn: “Strip”
New Poem by Amalie Flynn: “Strip”
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New Poetry by Damian White: “Alabaster Clouds”
New Poetry by Damian White: “Alabaster Clouds”
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New Review from Larry Abbott: “Corn, Coal & Yellow Ribbons” and “Midnight Cargo”
Corn, Coal & Yellow Ribbons. Poems by Kevin Basl and Nathan Lewis. Trumansburg, NY: Out of Step Press, 2021. Midnight Cargo: Stories and Poems. Kevin Basl. Trumansburg, NY: Illuminated Pres...
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Fallujah-Korengal/Korengal-Fallujah
In my blog Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature I rarely reviewed memoir and non-fiction. I also tried to promote stories about war other than those by infantryme...
New Poetry by Abena Ntoso: “Dear Melissa”
New poem by Abena Ntoso: “Dear Melissa”
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New Poetry by Luis-Lopez Maldonado: “Virus Como Chocolate” and “Pancho Villa, Cesar Chavez y Luis Lopez Madonado”
New poetry by Luis-Lopez Maldonado: “Virus Como Chocolate” and “Pancho Villa, Cesar Chavez y Luis Lopez-Maldonado”
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New Fiction by LN Lewis: “Her Boyfriend Felipe”
“You must really like mango.” The girl lifts them, one, two, three, and puts them in the paper bag, but it’s me she is looking at. Sort of. One eye fixes on me and the other eye wanders off to the ...
New Fiction by Gordon Laws: “Make Their Ears Heavy, Shut Their Eyes”
I know a deaf man who was once shopping in a general store. A stranger in town was also in the store, and he observed that the deaf man made no movement in response to sounds or voices and hence th...
New Review by Michael Gruber: “The Myth of the Clean Air War”
A review of Kimberly K. Dougherty’s Airpower in Literature: Interrogating the Clean War, 1915-2015 One of war’s most pernicious myths is that new technology will not only hasten its outcome but les...
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Memory and Memoir in Afghanistan
The opening of this month’s column repeats much of a Time Now: The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Art, Film, and Literature post I wrote in 2018. The rest updates and expands upon that post by ref...
New Poetry by Sofiia Tiapkina: “To Forget or Not Maybe,” “Grasping the Sky,” and “Airless Embrace”
to forget or not maybe to forget or not maybe to fight for memory or not i’m here i’m she lying on my back underneath me blue cherries of bruises ten backs all pierced by bullets all r...
New Poetry by Steve Gerson: “Our Prayers”
Our Prayers where are the shields/we need/to stop the blastof bullets Glockand AKassaults?that overwhelm the bluein our veins?that enter our brains ourschools the bodiesof children with unicornback...
New Nonfiction from Michael Gruber: Review of J. Malcolm Garcia’s “Most Dangerous, Most Unmerciful: Stories from Afghanistan”
Humanity in Afghanistan For the average American G.I. who served in Afghanistan, the country was of a different world. Most understood Afghans had relatively little in common with us, its would-be ...
New Fiction from Kirsten Eve Beachy: “Soft Target”
For Sallie. By Picture Day in November, Sophie had perfected the downward stab and counting to twenty. She clenched her soft fingers around her rainbow pony pencil, raised her fist high, and then s...