The most versatile piece of equipment an infantryman carries is a four-letter word. It can be used in almost every conceivable situation. It’s sharp, cuts smooth and clean. It can sever all manner of ties, emotional or professional or anything in between, in a single motion. Its shock-and-awe effect can rattle even the most linguistically […]

“Drone up,” said Lieutenant Levi. Heads turned and eyes followed the drone’s swift ascent to the sequoia canopy 350 feet above. It briefly hovered there before slipping out of sight, free of the enclosing redwoods and the damp shadowed ground. “Eyeballs on the treeline,” ordered Captain Sophie Bencker. She stood next to the prisoner in […]

A Game of Soldiers – A Review of Playing Army by Nancy Stroer LT Minerva Mills is a hot mess. Literally. We meet her with ‘sweat pooling in her waistband’ as her mother rams through a terminally inappropriate ‘Pink Tea’ at Minerva’s first assumption of command ceremony at Fort Stewart, aka ‘Camp Swampy,’ Georgia, on […]

New Poetry by Shawn McCann: “All I Can Do Is Watch” and “No Way To Fight Back”

New Poetry by Kathleen Hellen: “People Boats” and “Pretending There Is Garden In The Spring, Paradise In Time”