Sometimes in life, one experiences a shock or a revelation so powerful that it stays with you for years. For me, one such shock occurred at the Yavoriv training area in Western Ukraine, in June of 2015, embedded with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which was training about 2,000 members of Ukraine’s National Guard. The shock [...]

The temperature on this Tuesday morning in Grants Pass, Oregon, is edging up to ninety degrees as Helen Cruz and Justin Wallace enter the J Street Camp. The cloudless sky is a glazed, pale blue. Not surprising weather for late August, Helen knows.

cold laps the shore
no choice but to step in
stride out, stake my place
transmute into tower

“This is what he signed up for,”
my mother says when
my brother graduates from West Point.
He always wanted to be a soldier,
so she and I pin the bars on his shoulders.