You’d caught
the big one they said, you’d hooked a willow and
sank thigh deep into the muck. They hung up…
Archives
Archives
A sickness of the soul: remembering Adam and Tim Davis
Correction submitted by Delta Company paratrooper: five, not four, paratroopers died from the IED. “Matthew Tay…
New Poetry by Aidan Gowland
Breathless If you say “I am not a monster” Into the mirror and turn around three times A better version of you…
New Fiction from Ulf Pike: “Title and Price”
It was not rare to see horses on Main Street when I was growing up in this town. I was spindly and spry then, …
Book Review by Eric Chandler: IT’S MY COUNTRY, TOO
This happened in the 1980’s. Maybe it was after I joined the military or before, when I was thinking about it. In eit…
New Poetry from Liam Corley
In Which I Serve as Outside Reader on General Petraeus’s Dissertation [The current version of the Army’s Field …
An Interview with Brooke King, author of WAR FLOWER: MY LIFE AFTER IRAQ
Andria Williams: Brooke, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with Wrath-Bearing Tree. We are all excited to fe…
Review of Jon Chopan’s Veterans Crisis Hotline
A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend named Ted. Ted is a fellow veteran, and classmate of mine from th…
New Fiction: Beethoven and the Beggar
A handsome couple strolled arm in arm down Central Park West. The man, tall and athletic with a thick, well-brushed m…
New Nonfiction from Brooke King: “Ghosts” and “The Only Stars I’ve Seen”
Ghosts The young Iraqi girl stared back at me, her face covered over in black; only her eyes shown out from under the…
Suicide, the Soldier’s Bane
Here’s how it happens: you get a text. Or you see a cryptic post about the importance of friendship and “reaching out…
New Fiction: The Sandbar
The morning of day three, Kelly decided to go out on a jet ski. She’d been resistant at first for all the usual reaso…
New Poems by Alex Pitre
Slurry The bones had been surrounded by years of suppression, political amnesia, and walls of loam that contained not…
New Essay: To Honor a Hero by Claudia Hinz
It’s story time at the base library here at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, San Diego, home to the 3rd Marin…
Flash Fiction from Amanda Fields: “Buffalo”
When I was a child, and my father had just begun to be noticeably strange, my mother took me to the zoo. It was July,…
New Poetry by Denise Jarrott
manhunt will I always be poor always a slowing of small pittings where roots were milkweed meadowsweet rue or …
New Fiction from Jennifer Orth-Veillon: Marche-en-Famenne
The following is an excerpt from Jennifer Orth-Veillon’s work-in-progress, The Storage Room. Here, she interspe…
New Essay by Patrick Medema: Being Acquainted with Violence
I was in junior high the first time my friend was bullied. This was during the late 1990s, before we could maliciousl…
Writing about Our Worst Experiences: Reshaping Memories
As many artists have noted, memory underpins imagination. Creating new artistic and intellectual works depends critic…
New Essay from Jerad W. Alexander: An Exchange of Fire
I don’t know your name, but we tried to kill each other once. Do you remember it? It happened on November 5, 2005, on…
Mr. Tolkien’s War: A Review of Peter Jackson’s ‘They Shall Not Grow Old,’ by Rob Bokkon
Anyone who knows me at all well can tell you that I don’t really have a personality, per se: what I have instead is a…
New Poetry from Shana Youngdahl
After the Maine Tin Min Company Prospectus, 1880 The earth has veins we can open with our hammers. Follow the cassite…
New Essay from Claudia Hinz: The War at Home
Michael Florez felt called to the Marines. “No greater love than dying for your brother,” the 42-year-old Oregon resi…
HOMEBOY: New Fiction from Mark Galarrita
I went home to Jersey only once since the enlistment. I had to see my Ma. Back in the summer of 2011 I finished Basic…
New Poem by Eric Chandler: “The Path Through Security”
my family lived there before it was Maine before this was a even a country they still live there so we visit we fly i…
New Fiction from Patrick Mondaca: “The Ministry of Information”
Too often your mind wanders back to those places where God has turned his face away. For example: the prison your pla…
New Poetry from Frank Blake
We came home And had nothing to do and nowhere to go and too much freedom and money and space and women and cars and …
The Iliad: A Poem of Force and Pity
Every fall I read the first stanza of the Iliad out loud to my students: “Sing, Goddess, the Anger of Peleus’ son Ach…
The Hundred-Year Itch, or Remembering The Great War
Here are some facts about The Great War. It started in 1913. We know that from books. and the scarred nobles grandma …
Great WWI-era Austrian Writers: Musil, Zweig, Roth
During this ongoing centenary of the First World War, I became more interested in the details of the Italian front in…
New Fiction by Matthew J. Hefti: “Jean, not Jean”
Jean, not Jean by Matthew J. Hefti When I look in the mirror, I think I look stupid. Otherwise, I don’t even t…
New Poetry by Amalie Flynn for the WWI Centennial
Zone Rouge (for the centennial) 1. When the land was. 2. Full of bodies dead. And twisted. 3. When the fighting was. …
An Interview with Jennifer Orth-Veillon, Curator of the WWI Centennial Blog, by Andria Williams
Andria Wiliams: Jennifer, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Wrath-Bearing Tree. We are all huge fans…
Election Special: To Hell With Civility by Rob Bokkon
I’m so tired of re-writing this article. The drafts kept piling up and piling up and piling up, one after the other. …
The Long Road of History Impacts Today
More than one hundred years ago, nine thousand acres of fruit trees and farm land in Maryland were converted to one o…
No, Nazis were Not Leftists: Or, How to Debunk Right-Wing Propaganda
It is generally considered good practice not to “feed the trolls”— that is, not to engage in commentary with stranger…
New Fiction from Andria Wiliams: “Polecat”
Camp TUTO, Greenland 1960 When Paul, a nuclear operator, had arrived in Greenland, the reactor at Camp Century was st…
New Poetry from Randy Brown
victory conditions My father taught me to say I love you every time you stood in the door left for school went to wor…
New Nonfiction from Kiley Bense: Tell Me About My Boy
Here’s an empty grave, where a body that had been a boy became bones beneath a wooden cross. They buried him with one…
New Fiction from Patrick Hicks: Into the Tunnel
Editor’s Note: “Into the Tunnel” is the first chapter of Patrick Hicks’s new novel, ECLIPSE. …
Our Personal Community by Curtis J. Graham
It was in the news. On a bright summer day in Helmand Province, Lance Corporal Wickie did his duty and killed an insu…
Shining Light on the Darkness: An Interview with Patrick Hicks
Andria Williams: Patrick, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I’ve just finished reading “Into the…
“All. art. is. political:” An interview with Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales
Our two featured poems for the month are selections from Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales’s anthology, Pulse…
New Poetry from Nicole Oquendo and James A.H. White
The following poems are reprinted with permission from the anthology Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando (Damaged …
New Poetry from D.F. Brown
So, Who Wants to Walk Slack? Because we have no home in language We keep memories there As if the past were true And …
Fiction from Sara Nović: After the Attack
Well, nothing at first, not right after. In those initial moments panic is still optional. At the grocery store, the …
New Essay: How does Politics affect Writing, and Vice Versa?
I recently attended the 15th International Conference on the Short Story in Lisbon, where I met many interesting writ…
New Fiction from Ulf Pike: “Welcome Home, Brother”
My arm burned red resting out the window in the summer sun as I drove east out of the mountains. I passed through the…
New Movie Review: In “The Interpreters,” Home Is No Place At All
“The Interpreters,” a new documentary film by directors Sofian Khan and Andres Caballero, is a raw, emotionally vigor…
New Memoir: Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin
CALL ME AMERICAN / Abdi Nor Iftin Excerpted from Chapter Five: Arabic to English By December of 1992, the world could…