Five days ago at morning PT, Nate wasn’t in formation. Everyone assumed he was at sick call, and we did our workout w…
Fiction
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 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 …
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 …
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 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, …
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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…
Soldier
An homage to Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” (The New Yorker, June 1978). Wake up at oh-my-god-o’clock on …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 from Robert Alderman: “Shaved”
This is how the fight happened: earlier that morning, while waiting on reveille to bugle from the loudspeakers across…
New fiction from Taylor Brown: Excerpt, ‘Pride of Eden’
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Taylor Brown’s newest novel, Pride of Eden, out March 17th, 2020.…
New Fiction from John Darcy: “Sorry I Missed Your Call”
An hour before the drive, Bubs finds himself sucking down an edible. A big blowout blowtorched dab of a brownie. He c…
Fiction from Peter Molin: “The Brigade Storyboard Artist”
Captain Alex Athens had been the undisputed master of PowerPoint storyboards within the brigade headquarters since th…
New Fiction from Amy Waldman: ‘A Door in the Earth’
Excerpted from A DOOR IN THE EARTH Copyright © 2019 by Amy Waldman. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company…
The Spotlight Trial
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” -The Gospel of John One day you’re a teenage girl in the…
New Fiction from Brian Barry Turner
“So, you feel the earth rotating under your feet?” As Specialist Torres grasped tightly to the doorframe of the CO’s …
New Fiction from Daniel Ford: BLACK COFFEE
Excerpted from the collection Black Coffee by Daniel Ford, September Sky Press, June 2019. “Are we ever going …
New Fiction from Roz Wiggins: “Lucky”
I. Under a ceiling topped by swirling fans and surrounded by walls whose windows had no glass, the Private lay…
New Fiction from Mike Freedman: KING OF THE MISSISSIPPI
The shine and swagger of a new day. Great Recession? Not Houston. And yet, and yet there had been a speed bump in Se…
New Fiction from Steven Kiernan: “All Your Base Are Belong to Us”
For the amputees of Walter Reed Army Hospital, Segways were the new fad. It had become common to see roving gangs of …
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “Special Operations World”
No more than 10 percent of the United States military was special operations when I got out. Being in special operati…
Japanese Poetry Never Modifies
August 2011 I remember when you first joined, I used to tell you that the Army would be four years, the way that coll…
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, …
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 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…
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 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…
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 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…