Iraq War Archives - Wrath-Bearing Tree

Whether we wanted it or not, America was – up until this very moment, perhaps – truly the indispensable nation.

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I can still see his smile as I settle into my desk and the normal morning wave shuffles in. First comes the pinstripe…

Since getting back from deployment, Frank had gone soft. He was still a massive block of muscle, but the edges had ro…

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 …

Hassan Blasim’s 2014 short-story collection The Corpse Exhibition captured American readers with its harrowing portra…

Grant crouched on the sandstone and leaned on his fishing pole. The sun warmed his shoulders as he stared through the…

On a bright December morning, the lieutenant told me the news. An insurgent group in Latifiyah had executed about twe…

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…

1. I’m reading Aaron Graham’s war poetry. And I think violence is a volcano. How pressure builds. Between layers of r…

Andria Williams: Brooke, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with Wrath-Bearing Tree. We are all excited to fe…

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a friend named Ted. Ted is a fellow veteran, and classmate of mine from th…

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…

Too often your mind wanders back to those places where God has turned his face away. For example: the prison your pla…

STORM The wolves are restless this morning. Pacing the woods, huffing and murmuring. It’s not that they’re hungry; Ri…

There’s an odd narrative thread in Greta Gerwig’s 2017 Lady Bird. The titular hero lives out her senior year of high …

There are many moving parts in a gun. There’s the trigger, which most people mistakenly believe is what fires the who…

Concerning whether or not I am a horse I strap torso & press arms to diaphragm with breath deep the distressed vo…

Toward an understanding of war and poetry, told (mostly) in aphorisms Poetry is the long war of narrative. Poetry, li…

Across the eight-lane roadway from the observation post was a gas station where Iraqis waited for days, siblings and …

After war, most societies look for love. Instead of dealing with the various manifest issues that remain after y…

American Sniper, a new film based on the book of the same name, is being released on Christmas Day. Directed by Clint…

Thought experiment. Someone you know, and who knows you, but not very well, says in public that you have no integrity…

Tag: Iraq War