Apples‘The landmines are just like apples’Khmer Rouge survivor Apples can peel your skinLike it isn’t there But more often than notThe cruellest fruitSucks the rusty blade And leaves threads Drippi...
New Fiction: Three Flash Fiction Pieces from William Alton
Three Pieces of Flash Fiction Things That Stood Out There was a boy in Izard. A brave boy. Everyone knew him. Ricky Dunkle. The Dunkles were quiet people. They lived across from the school in a lit...
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “Wonder Woman”
In Atlanta at the Ritz Carlton we stopped at the bar by the lobby on our way upstairs. Fred saw Newt Gingrich who was dressed neat casual wearing loafers (I don’t know what a loafer is but that’s w...
New Nonfiction from Sarah Haak: “Assimilation”
My husband has downloaded a sleep cycle app for his phone. Every evening he tucks the phone into bed with him, under the sheets so it can measure how many times he moves during the night, and when ...
New Poetry from Lauren Davis: “The Flowers You Brought Back From Italy”
Each time I open my notebook the pages stick.Because I’ve forgotten. And onto the ground they fall:royal purple flowers fall out,emerald stemmed, blue veined,life from the coast of Italy. You pulle...
New Poetry from Scott Janssen: “Bottle Tree”
On my first visit I askedA stock question about Whether you’d been in the military. Marines, nineteen sixty-six, you said,A hint of menace in your eyes. I never talk about it. On my way out the doo...
New Fiction from Matt Gallagher: “The Biggest Little City”
“Been to Las Vegas? Clean. Corporate. Sleek, serious suit. We’re that guy’s kid brother selling Adderall in the parking lot.” That’s a line I use at cocktail parties and readings and the like. Book...
New Nonfiction from Erin Carpenter: “Fully Involved: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Date Night”
Part 1: The Healing Shed In 2016, my husband burned our guesthouse to the ground. He left a t-shirt over a lightbulb while painting the eaves, and the fire inspector said the motion detector probab...
New Poetry from Nestor Walters: “Homecoming”
Only the dead have seen the end of war –Plato he lies down, finally to rest. grey light bands his closed door with no silver at the edges. They said he left one foot in the sand. wait, a head no, a...
“Art-Making is My Light:” An Interview with Poet Suzanne S. Rancourt
As Suzanne Rancourt notes, her work is a bridge between disparate worlds, attempting to make connections between these worlds, whether they be the Indigenous and Anglo worlds, or the worlds of the ...
New Poetry from Sheila Bonenberger: “They Gave Their Lives”
The brass buttons are piled in a bowl that sits on the shop counter beside the cash register, so I buy one,watch as the clerk drops itinto a paper bag, gently folding the open end overso the button...
New Fiction from Brian Castner: The Troll
John Gurdenson’s legs weren’t what they used to be, and though the veteran charged hard on the forecheck, he was slow, too heavy and slow, and all of us in the arena groaned as the puck slipped dow...
New Nonfiction by Abena Ntoso: Memorial Day
There are four ways of telling what happened. 1. Just tell the truth. Some stories are told just once; others are told over and over again, like myths and legends. We remember such stories not beca...
New Poetry from Mack Freeman: “Death Row Butterflies”
Gossamer wings glintRazor wire gleams in sunlight Death row butterflies
...
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Checkpoint,” “There are 4 Ways to Die in an Explosion,” “Good Friday,”
Checkpoint &...
The Splintering Effect
Time is much longer when you’re sober, moments like molecules dragging into pixelated detail with nothing to dull the sharp edges. I sit quietly on the beach this morning melting into day. Th...
Soldier
An homage to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (The New Yorker, June 1978). Wake up at oh-my-god-o’clock on Monday and run six miles; run another six miles at the same time Tuesday through...
Artist Profile: Larry Abbott Interviews Musician Vince Gabriel
INTRO: Vince Gabriel has been making music since his high school days in New Jersey. Born in South Amboy on September 16, 1947, he learned the guitar after his father brought one home. Influe...
New Poem from Nazli Karabiyikoglu: “Hymn: A Coffin at the Gates of Topkapi”
The head, decapitated,it sits on a shore, at some corner of the world.Desperation is what they feel as blood gushes out from the half-neck.Death, however, has always been there,nothing new, ...
Praying at America’s Altar: A Review of Phil Klay’s MISSIONARIES, by Adrian Bonenberger
One of the first books I read was given to me by my father, who got it from his father—a children’s version of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Opening the tome in the garret that was our home, I’d be tr...
A Brief History of an Apology
Here are questions. How is it possible to engage in a process of healing for the evils of history? Who has the right to ask forgiveness for historical crimes? Who will be chosen to represent ...
New Poetry from George Kramer: “Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother,” “Google Earth”
Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother Budapest, Hungary. December 1944. This stagnant end squats over its vile startFaster than a speeding bullet! from the slag pile, the louse wasteMore...
New Fiction from Matthew Cricchio: “War All the Time”
The Staff Sergeant shifted in his tight, class-A uniform and frowned. Phones rang and keyboards, the primary weapon of administrative Marines, clicked in the busy Personnel Support Detachment offic...
Artist Profile: Singer-Songwriter Jason Moon
Jason Moon served in Iraq with a combat engineering battalion. He returned to the States in 2004 and was eventually diagnosed by VA psychologists with depression, insomnia, and adjustment disorder....
Poetry from Westley Smith: “Homecoming,” “On Not Dying,” “Nocturne”
Homecoming He doesn’t feel quite right, being there—same house, a little run down, dirtierthan he remembers. They smile and shake his hand,escort him to his room—with everythingjust where he left i...
A Dispatch from Fort Atwater
Nostalgia is another word for history, but only our personal, petty, smalltime histories; history is all about the size of the frame, and nostalgia is a 3×5 photograph cropped around the perfe...
New Poetry from Jacqlyn Cope: “Mission 376: Patient X,” “Prolonged Exposure Therapy,” “Doxies and Rum”
MISSION 376: PATIENT X There’s dirt in his mouth now ...
Loyal to the Corps: A Review of Teresa Fazio’s ‘Fidelis’
The motto of the U.S. Marine Corps, or USMC, is “Semper Fidelis.” Commonly translated to “always faithful,” the motto—adopted in 1883 upon the urging of Colonel Charles McCawley, 8th commandant of ...
New Fiction from Henry Kronk: “We Found Out”
“What do you think?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “Could be an ambush.” “Could be.” “But here? The corps is miles back.” “Looks like it broke down.” It was true. Steam trailed through ...
Poetry from Dennis Etzel: “The War in Coming Out,” “The War in Men,” “The War in their Duties”
The War in Coming Out Today we honor those soldiers who fought for our country against oppressing forces. It was a matter of showing up. Like Leonard said, They gave me a medal for killing two men ...
New Nonfiction from Teresa Fazio: “Light My Fire”
The following excerpt is from Teresa Fazio’s Fidelis: A Memoir, reprinted with permission from Potomac Books. A week before leaving Iraq, I shuffled through my post-deployment health as...
Uncrossable Borders: A Review of Patrick Hicks’s New Novel, ‘In the Shadow of Dora’
As Patrick Hicks’s novel In the Shadow of Dora opens, it is July 1969 in bright-and-sunny Cape Canaveral, Florida. In just a few days the United States will send astronauts to the moon for the firs...
Artist Profile: Musician Emily Yates
INTRODUCTION Emily Yates joined the Army at 19, spent six years in, from 2002 until her “release,” as she puts it, in 2008, finishing as an E-4, and served two deployments to Iraq in 2005-06 and 20...
New Fiction from Lisa Erin Sanchez: “Signatures of Ghosts”
He had one scar when I met him, a single blow to the back of his neck in the soft fleshy space between head gear and body armor. He liked to say, I’ll tell you this for free. I’d move in close and ...
New Fiction from Brian Van Reet: “Lazarus”
We were the HMDs: the human mine detectors. In a sense the job was easy, but impossible to do well. There was no good method, for example, by which to differentiate animal carcasses packed with hig...
Novel Excerpt: Elliot Ackerman’s ‘Red Dress in Black and White’
That evening, at half past nine To William, the question of his mother is clear. The question of his father is more complicated, because there is Peter. The night that they meet, William is about s...
An Interview with Elliot Ackerman
Elliot Ackerman is the author of four novels–most recently Red Dress in Black and White, set in Istanbul primarily during the 2013 Gezi Park protests–and a memoir. Here’s a synops...
New Poetry from Mbizo Chirasha: “Casava Republics,” “Sad Revolutionary Lullabies,” “Rhetorics”
CASAVA REPUBLICS Juba Child of lost sperm in sunsets of political masturbation Wagadugu Deadline of our revolutions Darfur Constipated stomach ,disease ravaged, bloodless dozing monk. Nairobi...
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Mosul Reflections,” “St. Martin in the City,” “The Rearview Has Two Faces”
Mosul Reflections Ten years and the place is not the same. Memory of green hills in a dry land,cratered by what fell from the sky.I don’t know whether to trust the imageon the screen or the one in ...
An Interview with Filmmaker Jordan Martinez
First Sergeant Russell Tuason faces a dilemma: does he deploy once again to Iraq to lead the troops he has been training, or does he take a meritorious retirement from the Army and begin a family w...
New Review: BRAVO! Ben Fountain Scores a Touchdown on Reality
Americans do not genuinely support the troops. This is the impression Ben Fountain’s 2012 war novel Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk left me with. Though American society supports their mi...
“What Is The Name Of Your Dead Horse”
We start again:With promises made for silver pass, platinum deferment,tithing calls go out to the faithful wealthy,subscribers to the graveyard newsletter.Minute Men race for lifting choppers.Laugh...
American Exceptionalism: Quo Vadis?
In view of the failures of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA, which has seen over 2 million cases and more than 115,000 deaths as of this writing, the very idea of American exceptionalism has unrave...
“Daily Exercise”, “America”, “I Tell My Children”
daily exercise (haiku) my morning poemshave begun to sound like Tweetsfragments of bird song America we best reflect the spaces between us when we stand together I tell my children to clean their o...
Dissent in Iraq
By M.C. Armstrong and Noor Ghazi Protestors in Iraq have a great deal in common with the new wave of protestors in the United States. David McAtee, the owner of a barbecue restaurant and an unarmed...
The Gift of Trey
A nuclear reactor is nothing more than a glorified water heater. Sailors as young as nineteen, kids, bombard uranium atoms with neutrons until the binding energy of the atom is no longer able to ho...
The Witch
These days they call me by name: Hope. By “they,” I mean the people in our small dusty town, Masaka, where everyone knows everyone. When I was a little girl living with my grandmother, all I wanted...
Don’t Erase My History and Don’t Sell My Picture
A photo essay on the ongoing struggle of Korean “comfort women” In 2010, I visited The House of Sharing, a residence and nursing home outside of Seoul, South Korea, for former Korean “comfort women...
New Poetry from Chad Corrigan: “Hidden Mountain Tops”
The top of the mountain is hidden.It looks like a cloud of smoke.But it’s a snow filled cloud.The map says it’s thirty-seven hundredand sixty-nine feet.The clouds must be about thirty-f...
Two Poems by henry 7. reneau, jr: “watch what they mouth say, but listen what they hands do” and “The Book of Hours”
watch what they mouth say, but listen what they hands do i grew up hearing certain accents & vocabularies & speech patterns that were the aural essence of Home or the audible signal of dang...