On my first visit I askedA stock question about Whether you’d been in the military. Marines, nineteen sixty-six, you …
Tag: War
New Poetry from Nestor Walters: “Homecoming”
Only the dead have seen the end of war –Plato he lies down, finally to rest. grey light bands his closed door with no…
New Poetry from Sheila Bonenberger: “They Gave Their Lives”
The brass buttons are piled in a bowl that sits on the shop counter beside the cash register, so I buy one,watch as t…
New Poem from Nazli Karabiyikoglu: “Hymn: A Coffin at the Gates of Topkapi”
The head, decapitated,it sits on a shore, at some corner of the world.Desperation is what they feel as blood g…
New Poetry from George Kramer: “Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother,” “Google Earth”
Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother Budapest, Hungary. December 1944. This stagnant end squats over its …
Poetry from Westley Smith: “Homecoming,” “On Not Dying,” “Nocturne”
Homecoming He doesn’t feel quite right, being there—same house, a little run down, dirtierthan he remembers. They smi…
New Poetry from Jacqlyn Cope: “Mission 376: Patient X,” “Prolonged Exposure Therapy,” “Doxies and Rum”
MISSION 376: PATIENT X There’s dirt in his mouth now &nbs…
Poetry from Dennis Etzel: “The War in Coming Out,” “The War in Men,” “The War in their Duties”
The War in Coming Out Today we honor those soldiers who fought for our country against oppressing forces. It was a ma…
New Poetry from Mbizo Chirasha: “Casava Republics,” “Sad Revolutionary Lullabies,” “Rhetorics”
CASAVA REPUBLICS Juba Child of lost sperm in sunsets of political masturbation Wagadugu Deadline of our revolutions D…
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Mosul Reflections,” “St. Martin in the City,” “The Rearview Has Two Faces”
Mosul Reflections Ten years and the place is not the same. Memory of green hills in a dry land,cratered by what fell …
“What Is The Name Of Your Dead Horse”
We start again:With promises made for silver pass, platinum deferment,tithing calls go out to the faithful wealthy,su…
Poetry by Stephen Mead: Remembering Beirut, Halloween ’83; Map Pins; Forced Labor
Remembering Beirut, Halloween ‘83 The ground beds a stuffed effigy with bulging leaves.Through peculiar affinity it r…
Hostile Threat Detected: Adrian Bonenberger Reviews Joe Pan’s “Operating Systems”
Joe Pan popped up on many veteran writers’ radars in 2014. He had recently written the first great poem about what le…
Three Poems from Suzanne Rancourt
The Shoes That Bore Us It is a dream of kind slippers that coddle bunions appeasedby hands mittened as the same kind …
New Poem from Olivia Garard: “Hurry Up”
Hurry up – Halt. And quiet, Marines sleep. – Covers askew necks cocked weighted by the waiting. Dozing so…
Poetry Review: Graham Barnhart’s THE WAR MAKES EVERYONE LONELY
1. The book arrives. By mail and on the cover. There are clouds. Gray clumped in altostratus heaps. A military helico…
New Poetry from Amalie Flynn: “Celebrate”
1. Celebrate them. 2. Celebrate the soldier who went to war Just to kill. This soldier accused of shooting and Killin…
New Poetry from Paul Lomax
Faces oak branches reach &n…
Poetry from Bryan Blanchard: “Pillar of Salt” and “The Mannequin”
Pillar of Salt Raining fire, burning steel …And now I see haunted Images of headlessBodies bathed in bloodstained San…
New Poetry from Edison Jennings
A Letter to Greta “…so pitying and yet so distant,” Cecil Beaton Among my father’s posthumous flotsam recently …
New Poetry from Liam Corley
In Which I Serve as Outside Reader on General Petraeus’s Dissertation [The current version of the Army’s Field …
Suicide, the Soldier’s Bane
Here’s how it happens: you get a text. Or you see a cryptic post about the importance of friendship and “reaching out…
New Essay from Jerad W. Alexander: An Exchange of Fire
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…
The Hundred-Year Itch, or Remembering The Great War
Here are some facts about The Great War. It started in 1913. We know that from books. and the scarred nobles grandma …
New Fiction by Matthew J. Hefti: “Jean, not Jean”
Jean, not Jean by Matthew J. Hefti When I look in the mirror, I think I look stupid. Otherwise, I don’t even t…
New Fiction from Patrick Hicks: Into the Tunnel
Editor’s Note: “Into the Tunnel” is the first chapter of Patrick Hicks’s new novel, ECLIPSE. …
New Essay: Axe by M.C. Armstrong
I met a woman on my way to Iraq. Just before I stepped onto the midnight plane to Baghdad, she asked me what should …
THE WORDS ON THE INTERNET SAID MICHAEL HERR HAS DIED
Where were you when Michael Herr died in 2016? What were you doing? Did you listen to the opening voiceover of Apocal…
FOB by Daniel Ford
An excerpt of the debut novel Sid Sanford Lives! by Daniel Ford Sid stepped into the desert surrounding the cramped f…
New Poetry by Maurice Decaul
U S Grant on the Disbanding of the Iraqi Army I heard thunder in the mountains witnessed soft amber lightening in the…
On the Subject of Walls
While it’s fallen off the news somewhat, one of Donald Trump’s most conspicuous campaign-trail promises was to build …
Is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five an Anti-War Book?
Pop Quiz Which famous veteran author said the following? “An anti-war book? Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book …
Arms Sales, Cash, and Losing Your Religion
The lucrative Arms Sales market exists in the exact place where rational self-interest intersects with humanist ideal…
Sebastian Junger with WBT’s Drew Pham on “Tribe”
How can a society so disconnected from its wars welcome back its fighting women and men? What do we lose when we priv…
Against NATO: The Other Side of the Argument
Since 1989-1991 when every country in the USSR or the Warsaw Pact (save Russia) jumped ship at the earliest oppo…
The Bloodiest American War Many Americans Have Never Heard Of
The title, which I selected myself, is a trick. Most citizens of the United States of America know their war his…
The Unusually Literal World of Bowe Bergdahl
Military hyperbole is at the heart of Serial’s second season. Sarah Koenig has gambled that she can take a simp…
Curzio Malaparte: Great & Anonymous WWII Writer
How World War II gets remembered isn’t accurate, and for Curzio Malaparte, it's not even true. Not the …
Why Don’t Afghans Love Us: Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue
There aren’t many “literary” fiction books out about Afghanistan, and almost none authored by…
Brad Pitt and the Myth of the Wehrmacht
Brad Pitt loves playing in WWII movies. He loves fighting Nazis, who, incredibly, really existed, and were (if a…
Acronyms and 21st Century Conflict
Some useful acronyms by which to understand 21st century conflict: COIN: Counter Insurgency. Employed by ISAF in Afgh…