For Sallie. By Picture Day in November, Sophie had perfected the downward stab and counting to twenty. She clenched h…
Archives
Archives
New Fiction from Chris Daly: “The Rothko Report”
“My father’s work takes you to the edge of the abyss and invites you to look.” -Son of Rothko …
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Interment at Arlington
The vet read that the hero’s burial ceremony in Arlington Cemetery was taking place the following Tuesday. As it happ…
New Poetry by Luis Rosa Valentin: “Desperate Need of Help”
Desperate Need of Help
…
New Poetry by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career?”
New Poem by Jennifer Smith: “So This is My Career”
…
New Fiction from Kate Sullivan: “All Sales Final”
GoodSouthernBoy™ is born to a RegularAmericanFamily! in Tennessee. You won’t learn where exactly, and if you do, you …
New Fiction by Joe Millsap: Dreamland
Muhamet reaches for a plastic water bottle resting on the metal filing cabinet that serves as a nightstand. He drinks…
New Nonfiction from F. Ahmeti: Bunker Mentality
“The home of the Albanian belongs to God and the guest.” Kanun Durres reminds me of the Jersey Shore. The mix of fami…
New Review by Adrian Bonenberger: John Milas’ “The Militia House”
In the Mind of Madness There is a nightmare I used to have with some regularity even before my time in the military, …
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: The Afterlife of Words and Deeds
A recent Los Angeles Times review of A Line in the Sand, the latest novel by Kevin Powers, the author of seminal Glob…
New Poetry by Jim Kraus: “Amphibious”
AMPHIBIOUS In Hokusai’s “Kanagawa Wave,” the boatmen look like a school of masquerading fish about to d…
New Review from Adrian Bonenberger: Jaroslav Hasek’s “The Man Without a Transit Pass and Other Tales”
There are few things I like better than sitting down with a copy of classic Central or Eastern European literature fr…
New Nonfiction from Andrew Davis: Korta Za: Go Home
Andrew Elliot Davis was born July 1, 1990 in Worcester, MA; his family moved to Milford, NH, where he graduated high …
New Fiction by Pavle Radonic: Murder, War and the Dead
An old unsolved murder mystery in a foreign sea-port. Ship Captain the victim, done nobody any harm. Who killed Capta…
New Fiction from Andrew Snover: Dana and the Pretzelman
The Pretzelman died yesterday. He was shot on his corner half a block from his home, and if he has family they’ll pil…
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: Spotlight on MilSpeak and Middle West Presses
Major publishing house enthusiasm for war, mil, and vet-themed books has noticeably waned in the past few years, but …
Fiction by David Abrams: “Thank You”
Thank you Thank you for your service Thank you for going Thank you for coming back Thank you for not dying Thank you …
New Fiction by Cory Massaro: “Gran Flower”
I fill the big bucket with soap and water and start heading across the field. It’s early on a Sunday and Gran …
New Poetry by Todd Heldt: “This Is A Drill, This Is Only A Drill” and “Suffer The Children”
ACTION IS PRETTY / image by Amalie Flynn This is a drill. This is only a drill. They voted to abolish history.…
New Poetry by Justice Castañeda: “There Will Be No Irish Pennants”
There Will Be No Irish Pennants “Discipline organizes an analytical space.” [1] Field Day & Inspection. Wi…
New Review from Larry Abbott: Lauren Kay Johnson’s “The Fine Art of Camouflage”
Camouflage can exist on a number of levels. There is the basic military definition of disguising personnel, eq…
New Review from Rachel Kambury: David Chrisinger’s “The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Second World War”
The War of Little Things A review of David Chrisinger’s The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II…
New Nonfiction from Laura Hope-Gil: “The Train”
We were staying in the youth hostel in Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn and on a day trip to see the castle in S…
Peter Molin’s “Strike Through the Mask!”: American Veterans and the Ukrainian Crisis
Bordentown is a pleasant town located on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River about twenty miles north of Philad…
New Nonfiction by I.S. Berry: “Math and Other Things I Learned from War”
Numbers don’t lie, they say. 2 + 2 = 4. No matter how you rearrange it; no matter how you solve it. Turn it into subt…
New Poetry by Carol Everett Adams: “Rabbit Trails”
RABBIT TRAILS in the Texas dust. We’re flat in the dirt so we can poke around down there with a long st…
New Nonfiction by M.C. Armstrong: “Murder Most Foul: The Role of Lyndon Johnson in the Murder of John F. Kennedy”
What is the truth, and where did it go? Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know. “Shut your mouth, ”…
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “American Fapper 2: Still Fappin’”
I know what you’re thinking. What could this story possibly be about. Let me catch you up. First of all, you’r…
New Fiction by Cam McMillan: “The Colors of the Euphrates”
She came from the south, wearing a bright red dress and carrying a light blue backpack, weaving through the well-worn…
Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!: “So Say We All and the Veterans Writing Workshop”
Justin Hudnall, the founder and director of the San Diego-based performative writing-and-reading collective So Say We…
New Poetry by Corbett Buchly: “Messages from Below”
messages from below the radio signals emanated from the depths commuters puzzled over the whistles and …
New Nonfiction from Larry Abbott: Review of Joy Damiani’s “If You Ain’t Cheatin’, You Ain’t Tryin'”
Joy Damiani: If You Ain’t Cheatin’, You Ain’t Tryin’ (and other lessons I learned in the Army) Available on Amazon i…
New Nonfiction from Thomas Donovan: “After the War”
There was a heavy snowfall that February night in 1946. A six-year-old boy watched from his bedroom window as the big…
New Fiction from Eddie Freeman: “The Skirt Fetcher”
Sadie was a do-gooder, someone who was aware of the deeply rooted systematic injustices that perpetuated oppression t…
New Fiction by Bob Kalkreuter: “Unhitched”
He remembered that day. God, did he remember it! His worst day in a year of worst days, a day he’d spent the last six…
Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!: A Review of Andrew Bacevich’s “Paths of Dissent”
What did you do if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and believed the wars you volunteered to fight were uneth…
New Poetry by Jehanne Dubrow: “Poem for the Reader Who Said My Poems Were Sentimental and Should Engage in a More Complex Moral Reckoning with U.S. Military Actions”; “Epic War Poem”; “Tyrian Purple,” and “Some Final Notes On Odysseus”
When the goddess cries out,
her voice is a mountain against
the fighting. But the old soldier
keeps…
New Fiction from Jane Snyder: “Mandy Schott”
They sent us home from school early because of the snow, just hard little flakes at first. I didn’t look in the garag…
New Nonfiction from Antoinette Constable: “A Hundred Roses for Olga Herzen”
To some people outside our circle, Charles Rist was seen as a saintly hero. Charles Rist, our grandfather, was a famo…
New Nonfiction from Patrick Hicks: “A Woman’s Place”
Ravensbrück did not fall from the sky. It was planned. It was built. It was managed. The only all-female concentratio…
Peter Molin’s Strike Through the Mask!—Elliot Ackerman’s “The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan” and Jamil Jan Kochai’s “Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories”
It’s a commonplace that America largely ignored the long war in Afghanistan while it was being fought. Now, aft…
New Nonfiction from Lauren Kay Johnson: “Inheritance of War” an Excerpt from The Fine Art of Camouflage
I swore I would never become a soldier like my mother. She called it a blip, a few months out of an otherwise enjoyab…
New Poem by Sandra Newton: “Naught”
NAUGHT There is naught to be done for it: We are over As the ocean is over its attraction And is now crawling Back fr…
New Nonfiction from Joan Stack Kovach: “What He Wore”
He was always a very sharp dresser. Firstborn child, he toddled around in a merino wool coat from Lord&Taylor and…
New Fiction from Michael Loyd Gray: “The Song Remains the Same”
Dalton bought a used F150 in Kalamazoo with oil rig money and drove north to a trailer he owned south of Mancelona. I…
New Fiction from Lucas Randolph: “Boys Play Dress Up”
When visiting a friend’s grandpa, the Boy learned that the grandpa liked watching football games on the weekend…
New Fiction from Bailee Wilson: “The Sun Burns Out in Vietnam”
Vietnam, 1969 The world appeared like a ripple in a puddle- a Jell-O jiggle spreading across dark green jungle water.…
New Nonfiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Othello Avenue”
In the cold autumn dawn shadows blanket Othello Avenue, the parked cars and vans little more than gauzy, damp lumps, …
New Nonfiction from MaxieJane Frazier: “A Military Liberal Education”
The scored green vinyl seat inside an Air Force Bluebird bus at the base of the “Bring Me Men” ramp at the U.S. Air F…
New Fiction by Rachel Ramirez: “The Witness”
I am in the grand room of the High Commissioner’s Residence in Manila. A crystalchandelier hangs from the ceili…