Here are questions. How is it possible to engage in a process of healing for the evils of history? Who has the …
Archives
Archives
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 …
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 o…
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 d…
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 smi…
A Dispatch from Fort Atwater
Nostalgia is another word for history, but only our personal, petty, smalltime histories; history is all about the si…
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 &nbs…
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…
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…
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 ma…
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.&n…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
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 c…
An Interview with Elliot Ackerman
Elliot Ackerman is the author of four novels–most recently Red Dress in Black and White, set in Istanbul primar…
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 D…
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 …
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 train…
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…
“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,su…
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 115,00…
“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 …
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 th…
The Gift of Trey
A nuclear reactor is nothing more than a glorified water heater. Sailors as young as nineteen, kids, bombard uranium …
The Witch
These days they call me by name: Hope. By “they,” I mean the people in our small dusty town, Masaka, where everyone k…
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 …
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&#…
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 & s…
New Poetry from Eric Chandler: “The Things You Leave Out”
The Things You Leave Out after Yamamoto Jōchō, Jim Morrison, and Robert Frost You quote One c…
New Fiction from Jesse Goolsby: “Anchor & Knife”
The first time I met you I fought your father in the driveway. He fisted a tire iron, but he’d been drinking and he o…
New Fiction from Gregg Williard: “Zone Rouge”
I got off the bus and a woman kept pace. Skinny black jeans with a fat silver belt of keys. “I know how you feel.” “I…
New Essay by Joshua P.F.: Bombs in the Trash
It was a relatively clear and cool night in the spring of 2008 on our fortified U.S. compound, Camp David, which was …
New Op Ed from Teresa Fazio: This Memorial Day, Let’s Honor Essential Workers
In the first weeks of lockdown, I paced my two-room Harlem apartment, feeling trapped while an unpredictable threat l…
Fiction from Peter Molin: “Cy and Ali”
The following short story is based on the myth “Ceyx and Alceone,” as recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Cy busied hi…
New Fiction from Rufi Thorpe: An Excerpt from ‘The Knockout Queen’
The following excerpt of The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe is reprinted with permission by A.A. Knopf. When I was ele…
New Fiction from Ken Galbreath: “Checkpoint”
In high school, I was invisible–acne and braces, last year’s wardrobe. I didn’t have close friends. My grades w…
Reading Camus’ ‘The Plague’ in 2020: A Dispatch from Lyon, France, by Jennifer Orth-Veillon and John Tyrrell
“It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another as it is to represent anything that really exis…
Poetry Review of Jabari Asim’s STOP AND FRISK
1. They say Stop-and-friskIs a brief and non-intrusive stop of a suspect.Which can be deadly in America where Statist…
New Essay by Anthony Gomes: Is There Finality in Death?
All beings in this world, all bodies must break up: Even the Teacher, peerless in the human world. The mighty Lord an…
New Essay by Lauren Kay Johnson: Things Received
A portion of this essay was originally published in Cobalt Review. It came by helicopter twice a week, if weather and…
A Review of Rufi Thorpe’s New Novel ‘The Knockout Queen,’ by Andria Williams
“Who deserves anything?” asks Lorrie Ann, one of the protagonists of Rufi Thorpe’s first novel, The Girls from Corona…
New Poetry from Matt Armstrong: “Covid Night”
Paris sirensPewter skyThe white laceOf a dogwood boughAt midnight Reach upClutch and huffHungry before bedFor the swe…
Poetry by Stephen Mead: Remembering Beirut, Halloween ’83; Map Pins; Forced Labor
Remembering Beirut, Halloween ‘83 The ground beds a stuffed effigy with bulging leaves.Through peculiar affinity it r…
New Fiction from Matt Gallagher: Excerpt, ‘Empire City’
Reprinted with permission from Atria Books. Mia Tucker woke before the alarm. She usually did on weekdays. She was a …
New Fiction Review: Matthew Komatsu On Matt Gallagher’s ‘Empire City’
As Avengers was wrapping up last year, I mentioned how excited I was to see the finale to a friend, who responded wit…
New Nonfiction from Charles Stromme: “The Army Profoundly Regrets”
1972 I was back from a year of flying helicopters in Vietnam. The Army gave me a make-work job at Ft. Riley, Kansas, …
Hostile Threat Detected: Adrian Bonenberger Reviews Joe Pan’s “Operating Systems”
Joe Pan popped up on many veteran writers’ radars in 2014. He had recently written the first great poem about what le…
