The air is thick with billowing dust from hundreds of military transports and white pickup trucks—I’d forgotten the white trucks. The frightened crowd nearby falls silent as they pass. A contagion of despair drifts around us.
This is the fairytale you inherit. Told at kitchen tables, retold in sighs and sorrowful silences. The details are few, but the shape of the story remains. You fill in the rest with the whispering ghosts
Cry HavocBy Jack CarrSimon & Schuster, 2025. 560 pp. I am a pacifist, opposed to war across the board, and it is as a pacifist that I am reviewing Jack Carr’s Cry Havoc, a book that
Author’s note: In this poem, I sought to explore Jakarta as a place of the past that has inherited a history of colonial occupation and violence. Through a semi-autobiographical account of my father’s and grandfather’s
By Hesham Eldeeb O Lord, take away immortality,but leave this cold apple cellar.Take the souls and all your playthings, but spare our lives,neither Adam’s, nor Eve’s, nor your son’s,but my son’s life.This damp cave in
Artist Statement: Once you learn to ride a bicycle, you never forget the place where you learned how. At least, that’s the way it worked for my father. When I was a child, he would
Author’s Note: This is a first-person eyewitness account; some names and identifying details have been changed or combined to protect privacy. Events are presented as remembered; timelines are condensed for clarity. ~ We woke into three
Mariam sat up straight, legs folded under her, and continued to fiddle with the armchair’s fraying upholstery. I waited silently as she took a second to master her tears. The marquee from the neighboring hotel provided
The Venus of Odesa: New and Selected PoemsBy Askold MelnyczukMadHat Press, 2025. 139 pp. ~ On the cover of Askold Melnyczuk’s The Venus of Odesa: New and Selected Poems, a young blond woman looks at us reproachfully:
Author’s Note: To be the spouse or partner of a war veteran can truly be an exercise in vigilance. We become aware of the significance of particular dates, of images. We might notice goosebumps raised on
It had rained all night. But the morning was sunny and gorgeous. The dappled sunlight formed chiaroscuro patterns that appear only in summer. Early birds were chirping, and the air felt clean and fresh. I
By Abby E. MurrayRecovery CommandsEx Ophidia Press (2025), 95 pp There is a familiar predicament that many of us can recognize at once: We’re in an environment, not of our making, with which we’re not
