I end wars. When I arrive at bases and conflicts, my job is to help close them, move them, go underground. My military experiences travel the circumference of war, seldom intersecting the dangerous center of
Infiltration by Asmaa Samir Editor’s Introduction: Written by Elham Al-Zubaidi—and translated by Amir Al-Azraki and Sharon Findlay—“Camp Seagulls” makes a necessary contribution to Arab women’s literature in translation through highlighting lived experiences of Iraqi women,
“ . . . there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid’s delusion or a swindler’s story.”—Clifford Geertz, in his study of Balinese cockfighting We’ve left the frontier with the blue helmets. There is always
She had left her M-16A2 service rifle unmanned. She had left it in the fighting hole at the edge of the perimeter of our company’s position during a training field operation on Camp Lejeune, NC. She had
For my grandfather, Lewis Parke Chamberlayne “ . . . so-called periods of transition (if all periods are not so) –those centuries when a new religious or political systemis growing up amidst the decay of
She drops the newspaper on the table, announcing, “They’re still killing people in Syria, you know. They say it’s over, but it’s not. Anyone can see that. It’s not.” Although he has not read today’s
Debora Vogel Editor’s Note: To celebrate the launch this month of Anastasiya Lyubas’s Blooming Spaces: The Collected Poetry, Prose, Critical Writing, and Letters of Debora Vogel, Consequence Forum commissioned new translations of Vogel’s writing about
Matt Gallagher builds a strange but familiar world in his new novel, Empire City. An incredible mix of speculative genres, he has a science fantasy, alternate history/future, superhero, dystopian view on what would happen to
It’s six o’clock in the morning. A beautiful, mercifully cool summer Sunday morning. The final day of the three-day Stokes Folks Family Reunion. My father’s side of the family. Father’s mother’s side to be exact.
As I was reading about the group of women in Handmaid’s Tale red robes and white bonnets who staged a pro-choice protest in the Texas senate this week on Monday, March 20th, I was thinking
1. So I found myself sitting on a bench, waiting in a wooden building at Fort Holabird, an Army base in Baltimore, Maryland. A corporal, looking glum, walked through the rows of new recruits who
“How did you escape? You just, like strolled out of there?” “No, I didn’t. It was the company that strolled out.” “And you didn’t go with them.” “I didn’t go with them, no.” “Didn’t they
