I met the Lieutenant at a diplomatic reception at our embassy. Carrying papers which issued weaponry to his nation’s …
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Archives
New Poetry by Michael Carson: “Politics”
Politics Every 20 years or so boys dress up And kill each other for fun. It’s the way of the wrack of the world The w…
New Nonfiction: “Underground” by Mark Hummel
In my childhood, television was a great unifier, for there existed a limited choice of three television networks, dis…
New Poetry by Kevin Norwood: “Rabbits in Autumn”
RABBITS IN AUTUMN Who will find our bones in a thousand years, bleached and brittle under the unyielding sun, scatter…
New Poetry by Joddy Murray: “Aphrodite Urania,” “Chronos After Castrating His Father,” “Grandpa Uranus, Rainmaker,” and “Uranus’ Genital Blood”
Aphrodite Urania From a womb of foam I came to be a woman, heavenly gestated from Father, who also brought wea…
New Poetry by Emily Hyland: “Rehab Day 1,” “Rehab Day 4,” “Rehab Day 9,” “Rehab Day 11,” and “Rehab Day 19”
REHAB DAY 1 He hadn’t told me, hadn’t stopped drinking drank beer in the hallway near recycling where people b…
New Nonfiction from J.G.P. MacAdam: “Was His Name Mohammed Hassan?”
I don’t want to keep going back there. I’m damn near forty years old; too broke and tubby to deploy anymore. It’s my …
New Fiction from Amar Benchikha: “Flight”
CONTENT WARNING: A hate crime against an Arab-American is committed in the story. Being an Arab-American myself, the …
New Poetry by Maggie Harrison: “Clutch and Bless”
my heart is a raspberry juicy yet taut fragile temporal eat it now before it degrades and leaves a tasteless p…
New Nonfiction from Karl Meade: “Knee-Capped”
We all live in a kind of delirium: as if we have control of our lives, while we know damn well something is coming. W…
New Poetry by Carol Graser: “Parkinson’s Triolet” and “Summer Isolation”
THE WIDENING FAULT / image by Amalie Flynn Parkinson’s Triolet I cup the base of your skull, catch precious ce…
New Fiction from Jim Speese: “The Darkness”
Sometimes these things happen. You wake from a deep sleep, whether a short afternoon nap or a long night’s slumber, a…
New Poetry by Betsy Martin: “About What You Have,” “Female Figure in Photos,” and “To Missoula”
GRASSES QUIVER BEFORE / image by Amalie Flynn ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE In my dream Dad, age one hundred twelve, has…
New Nonfiction from Jon Imparato: “You Had Me at Afghanistan”
“I was lying in a burned‐out basement with the full moon in my eyes. I was hoping for replacement when the sun burst …
Book Review: Lauren Hough’s ‘Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing’ and Sari Fordham’s ‘Wait for God to Notice’
“I was like an inept spy pretending to be American based on movies I’d watched and books I’d read.” — Lauren Ho…
New Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Love Engagement”
Noor and his wife Damsa moved to Paris when the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Twenty-two years later, after t…
New Nonfiction from M.C. Armstrong: “J.F.K. Revisited: Through the Looking-Glass”
I write this review of Oliver Stone’s new film during the most bizarre month in America since the January of the Capi…
Interview with Navy Veteran and Artist Skip Rohde, by Larry Abbott
Skip Rohde was an officer in the Navy for twenty-two years, with four submarine deployments and service in Desert Shi…
New Poetry by Suzanne O’Connell: “Airport Luggage Carousel” and “Shipwreck”
Airport Luggage Carousel A battered cardboard boxholes punched in the sidetied with frayed ropelid popping upplastere…
New Poetry by Saramanda Swigart: “Reckoning” and “The Small I”
RECKONING don’t worry about mei am not well but you’ve worried enoughmy prosperity has a body count— this shielded fl…
Book Review: David Ervin on Jerad Alexander’s ‘VOLUNTEERS: GROWING UP IN THE FOREVER WAR’
As the United States marks the twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Global War on Terror as well as an ugly …
New Poetry by Ben Weakley: “In Some Distant Country” and “How Will You Answer”
In Some Distant Country We have seen this before, in booksand on the screen, like dust plumes risingin some distant c…
New Fiction from Hadeel Salameh: “Everything Will Be Okay”
1. Her Friend the Israeli (Eli) Mais got a phone call from her parents in the occupied territories of the West Bank. …
New Nonfiction from Bettina Rolyn: “Adjustment Disorder”
For thirteen years, I stored my boxes of army documents and medical records in various basements, closets, and attics…
New Fiction from John Milas: “Burning the Dragon”
Stautner wasn’t my friend anymore. He didn’t get promoted with the rest of us on the first of the month. Now a fire b…
New Poetry by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky: “In And Out Of Time,” “In The Wake Of Our Lady Of The Double-Edged Axe The Notorious RBG,” “Prepping For Apocalypse,” “Sideswiped,” and “The Queen Of Souls”
IN AND OUT OF TIME In the fire-eaten landin the smoke-drenched airPUT CHARACTI dream PUT CHARACTCrystal Lake &nb…
New Fiction from Jon Imparato: “You Had Me at Afghanistan”
“I was lying in a burned‐out basement with the full moon in my eyes. I was hoping for replacement when the sun burst …
New Poetry by D.W. McLachlan: “Tanana River” and “The Heaviness of Age”
Tanana River We followed your Hilux along the riparian zone,a green snake blooming through the desert brown,when you …
New Interview from Larry Abbott: Suzanne Rancourt on Poetry, Myth, Nature, Indigenous Life
Suzanne Rancourt’s new book of poems, Old Stones, New Roads (2021) builds on the work of her two previous books (Bill…
New Fiction from Moe Hashemi: “Javid”
We buried Javid on a gloomy Friday morning in late December, shortly before Ali was gassed on the battlefront. All th…
New Poetry by Tony Marconi: “Song of the Roadway Door”
…three hundred miles,PUT CHahead the road more visiblePUT CHas the land dissolves in the pink light …
New Review from Amalie Flynn: Jan Harris’ “Isolation in a Time of Crisis”
The poems in Jan Harris’ Isolating One’s Priorities in a Time of Crisis are about the apocalypse. Or after. What happ…
New Fiction from Damion Meyer: “Reverse Process”
Five days ago at morning PT, Nate wasn’t in formation. Everyone assumed he was at sick call, and we did our workout w…
New Nonfiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Alabama Village”
(Editor’s Note: Some names have been changed for privacy.) The three white, rectangular buildings of Light of t…
New Review from M.C. Armstrong: Diane Lefer’s ‘Out of Place’
I can’t stop thinking about Dawit Tesfaye, an FBI agent in Diane Lefer’s excellent new novel, Out of Place. Shortly a…
New Nonfiction from Rob Bokkon: “Betrayal at Blair Mountain”
There were 10,000 of them. Boys fresh back from the war in France, middle-aged guys who fought in Cuba with TR, and o…
New Poetry by Sam Cherubin: “Don’t About Not,” “Mermaid Tavern,” and “Emerald Inula”
Don’t About Not If I can’t or think do it like I’m …
New Nonfiction by John Darcy: “Hypothermia”
The email takes me to a link that takes me to an article displaying two mugshots. The mugshots take me back to winter…
New Poetry from Alison Hicks: “I Took A Walk With A Friend” and “Untitled”
I TOOK A WALK WITH A FRIEND Instead of starting a poem &n…
New Fiction from Adam Straus: “ANA Checkpoint”
Sergeant Reiss insisted on giving a full patrol order every time we left the wire. I thought it was overkill, …
New Poetry from Amalie Flynn: “Married”
For twenty years I have been marriedto a morning. Of blue sky that stretchesand pulls across me like water filli…
New Flash Fiction from Mary Doyle: “Triple X”
It’s zero-three hundred and I’m yanked out of a sleep so deep I wake thrashing and fighting like a marlin at the end …
“The ‘Office Space’ of War Novels”: Susanne Aspley Interviews Brett Allen, Author of ‘Kilroy Was Here’
I first heard about Brett Allen’s debut novel, ’Kilroy Was Here’, by tweet from Matt Gallagher (@MattGallagher0), aut…
New Flash Fiction from Drew Pham: “On Their Lips, the Name of God”
This is the memory that stays with him as his blood abandons the body and life fades—this, the one comfort that will …
New Flash Fiction from Elise Ochoa: “Desert Crossing”
If you’ve never seen a desert, I mean, a real desert, you’d think the sand looks like murky brown water r…
New Nonfiction from Philip Alcabes: “Peppina”
1. A Child A neglected box in the back of my closet contains a contain a collection of items from my father’s apartme…
New Flash Fiction from Mason Boyles: “Parched”
The hermit lived in the water tower with an alligator, both of them long-gone paler than moon. Their eyes gemmed the …
Larry Abbott on Warrior Songs, Vol. Three: “The Last Thing We Ever Do: Vietnam Veterans Speak Truth”
Warrior Songs is a series of albums created under the direction of Iraq War veteran Jason Moon, profiled here in Wrat…
Nonfiction from Jennifer Orth-Veillon: “From Death Threats to a French Dandy, Afghan Contractors Abandoned by the U.S. Struggle to Find Asylum Abroad”
LYON, France—When the Taliban shoved him out of the sedan with the butts of their Kalashnikovs, Medhi could barely wa…
New Fiction from Mike McLaughlin: “What Could They Take from Him?”
After four months of not getting shot, not stepping on a mine, not taking a fragment to the neck or through the eye, …