Hassan Blasim’s 2014 short-story collection The Corpse Exhibition captured American readers with its harrowing portra…
Archives
Archives
New Review from Matthew Komatsu: Adin Dobkin’s ‘Sprinting Through No-Man’s Land’
I cannot separate my early memories of war from those of cycling. I’d just begun to cycle competitively — as a lieute…
New Poetry from Barbara Tramonte: “Tailored To Fit In”
Somebody sewed me with a stringOn the biasI was gatheredAnd about to pop This has been a pattern all my life They hem…
New Nonfiction by David Chrisinger: “Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guide to Writing about Trauma”
The following is an excerpt from David Chrisinger’s new book, Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guid…
New Nonfiction from Kristina Usaite: “Against a Cruel Society, I Came Out to Myself”
When I was losing myself, the only thing that saved me was immigrating to America. Only then, with great effort and s…
New Poetry from Alita Pirkopf: “Roadkill,” “Sounds of the Past,” “Spring,” and “Unhealthy”
ROADKILL I bring you blood in buckets,a heart that I hear, a palsied hand.It has been eight, tenyears, my issue.The s…
New Nonfiction from James Warren Boyd: “The Ecstasy of Sister Bernadette”
In seventh grade my Catholic elementary school received a new principal, Sister Bernadette, who strode onto the black…
New Poetry from Jesse Frewerd: “Symphony”
Ballistic medleys project ambition, while dancing tones find their pitch. There is unexpected buoyancy in our youth. …
New Fiction from David P. Ervin: “Currents”
Grant crouched on the sandstone and leaned on his fishing pole. The sun warmed his shoulders as he stared through the…
New Review: Mike Carson on Kevin Honold’s “The Rock Cycle: Essays”
Kevin Honold’s new essay collection, The Rock Cycle, begins in the Arabian Desert. It is 1991. U.S. forces have just …
New Poetry from Ron Riekki: “my”
my brain was left back in the war, the burialof ci…
New Fiction from Logan Hoffman-Smith: “Hunger”
There were sixteen of us before the storm hit: truants and runaways and young offenders, girls in insulated yellow sn…
New Poetry from Hannah Jane Weber: “My Childhood Smelled Like,” “Surprise Dawn”
MY CHILDHOOD SMELLED LIKE cabbage, salted tomatoes, and cracklings.the flume of dust I awakened when my fingers untan…
New Nonfiction by James Wells: “Signs”
June 27, 2008 I count between my mother’s breaths: one-thousand one, one-thousand two. Thirty minutes ago, her …
New Nonfiction from John Vrolyk: “Black Bracelets”
In 2011, two years before I show up to Officer Candidate School, the Marine Corps changes its uniform order to allow …
New Fiction from David Blome: “Bodies”
On a bright December morning, the lieutenant told me the news. An insurgent group in Latifiyah had executed about twe…
New Review from Adrian Bonenberger: Brian Castner’s “‘Stampede’: Disaster and Gold Fever in the Klondike”
My earliest exposure to the literature of 19th century Alaska came in the form of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. An …
New Poetry from Kevin Honold: “Elegy for the Emperor Frederick II”
i.view from Emigrant, Death Valley The snowy Amargosas kneel beside the salt flats stained with the blue shadows of c…
New Poetry from Alise Versella: “Parallels,” “Red-Breasted Sparrows,” “I Wonder If History’s Men Knew They Would Be Great,” “A Fierce Sense of Resolve”
PARALLELS The birds with convictionTap out their lyrics in the snowAnd their chatter descends upon the mountainsLook …
New Review from Michael Carson: “Cherry” by Nico Walker
Early on in Nico Walker’s Cherry, the narrator, working a dead-end shoe store job to pay for drugs while his parents …
New Film Review from Larry Abbott: “This is Not a War Story”
Timothy Reyes (Danny Ramirez), a young Marine Lance Corporal veteran, spends his days riding subway trains throughout…
New Review from Adrian Bonenberger: “‘The Hardest Place’: Wes Morgan’s Post-Mortem on Americans in Afghanistan’s Pech Valley”
If I were to write a morality tale about America’s counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan—something in line with Ed…
New Fiction from Susan Taylor Chehak: “With a Whimper”
This isn’t the first time that man has visited this cemetery, and he supposes it isn’t going to be the last. As a chi…
New Fiction from Gregory Johnsen: “Odds Are”
1. Heads Years later, long after the bodies had been pieced back together, after they’d been bagged and buried, after…
New Poetry from Tyler Vaughn Hayes: “They even pipe it into the bookstore,” “His first time: flight by ropes,” “The edict,” “Rappel annuel”
They even pipe it into the bookstore It’s never quite silent, though there’s no lowing, not from God nor his glutted …
New Nonfiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “The Forced Disappearance of Sombath Somphone”
Ng Shui Meng speaks of her husband Sombath Somphone in the present tense, with a firm matter-of-fact tone about his d…
New Photo Essay by Arin Yoon: “Standing Up for Change”
My first encounter with Joana Scholtz was as I ran after her (and her husband, Rik Jackson) as they were exiting camp…
A Tale of Two Coups
Forty years ago, I was living in Madrid working on a grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation to learn how Spanish …
New Fiction from Kyle Seibel: “Lovebirds”
So Senior Reyes, the new night shift sup. I see him and the new airman walking around the hangar bay. Just talking. H…
New Poetry from Andy Conner: “Apples,” “Untouchable,” “Remanded In Custody”
Apples‘The landmines are just like apples’Khmer Rouge survivor Apples can peel your skinLike it isn’t there But more …
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 D…
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 …
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…
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 flowe…
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 …
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 parki…
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 …
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…
“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 thes…
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 t…
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…
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 tol…
New Poetry from Mack Freeman: “Death Row Butterflies”
Gossamer wings glintRazor wire gleams in sunlight Death row butterflies
…
The Splintering Effect
Time is much longer when you’re sober, moments like molecules dragging into pixelated detail with nothing to du…
Soldier
An homage to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (The New Yorker, June 1978). Wake up at oh-my-god-o’clock on …
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 Sep…
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 g…
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 Il…