O-Dark-Thirty

Nov 3

Through the Glass

by Christopher Rance

Staring hard into the dark, we moved silently through the thick forest of concrete. Our shadows follow us as they track along the towering blast walls that snake through the city of Dora. There’s eight of us. Myself and my sniper partner Kelly, then six light infantry scouts, each battle-tested over the course of this war; Miller, Glass, Andy, Morales, Curry and Belford. As we fumble around the city in the middle of the night, we make our way to our final destination, a vacant two-story house on the west side of Dora. Our mission is to set up in one of the rooms and find a good vantage point to watch over a multilane highway that cuts through the heart of Baghdad and eliminate any threat that might be stirring about.

Oct 28

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The Great White Hunter

by David P. Ervin

Dense fog blurred the woods and wrapped Grant’s face in cold clamminess. The tree trunks stood out wet and dark against the brown and gray forest. He stopped to listen. There was silence besides the whoosh of the interstate miles away. The sweat under his jacket chilled him. He wiped condensation off his shotgun and continued up the hill.

Oct 26

Mind Hive

by Chris Stowe

Delay, delay the droning of the bees,
oh how they demand their daily fees!
With ceaseless swarming in the mind, someone please!
Delay, delay the droning of the bees.

MGySgt Chris Stowe is a twenty-two-year Marine Corps veteran with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician. Most recently completed a Congressional Fellowship in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, focusing on reform and oversight of the Veterans Benefits Administration. Currently serves as Senior Enlisted Advisor to a Wounded Warrior command at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Oct 24

Interrupted Sonnet, with My Girls

by TJ Reynolds

I curl my spine around her body;
she’s almost inside my ribcage.

Her head feels like a silk nest below
my chin. I breath her feather smell.

My second child, first girl, Delilah.
She watches Youtube while I type.

(she reminds me of the girl I’d do anything to make laugh
back in a suburb of Mosul in 2005 and I have to wonder
is she still alive, older then than my girl now, maybe six
or seven, but already wise enough to know that her teeth
could mean at least two things – it only made me clown harder)

My daughter flicks her hand at the next video
icon that catches her eye. I click on it solemnly

and she wiggles in my lap. For a moment
I am holding two girls, their lashes locked

together in a web of filaments. How could she
still be alive? Does she remember me riding past

waving, jeering, doing anything to stoke her
guttering will again, at least for the span of a smile?

(she leaves, her outline in sand motes broken by the passing
of my old squad’s Stryker, phantom turbines still beating
a wake down an alley somewhere in my mind, so I clutch
my girl and breathe, hoping to preserve her in my lungs)

TJ Reynolds is an MA student at California State University Fullerton. He served in 1/24th infantry and deployed to Mosul, Iraq in 2004, which has inspired much of his creative drive. TJ resigns himself to the foolish and necessary hope that poetry and art can save the world.

Oct 22

in the café

by David Shank

half-lit corners
shadows attend.
noir cast whispers,
secrets on the prowl.

nicotine beacons,
sinuous smoke.
silhouette’s illumed
then gone.

à toutes les tables
trowels traverse.
hopes dissolve
passing into clouds.

muses bait
shrunken matter
stirring catatonia
inspired haze.

vacant eyes,
filaments ablaze.
swirling haloes
flash and fume.

cadavers swathed
in barroom bouquet.
all arrayed
in peaceful agony.

and I, alike,
among the ruins.
pen stilled. pitcher tipped-
delivered.

in the café

David Shank graduated from the University of Nevada with  a music degree in Theory and Composition, and worked for forty years  as a professional musician.  Before entering school he served in the United States Air Force, 6910th Radio Group Mobile, in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Oct 19

a forward observer writes haiku

by Randy Brown

The King of Battle!
Genuflect to indirect
fires overhead!

That song about when
“caissons go marching along”?
That’s Artillery.

Flash against the clouds,
a rain of steel announced by
the crump of thunder.

The archer’s tale starts
“I have a fire mission”
and ends in an arc.

Much like carpenters,
we measure twice and shoot once.
Mistakes are costly.

In 2010, Randy Brown was preparing for deployment to Eastern Afghanistan as a member of the Iowa Army National Guard’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry ‘Red Bull’ Division. After a paperwork snafu dropped him from the list, he retired with 20 years of military service and a previous deployment. He then went to Afghanistan anyway, embedding with Iowa’s Red Bull units as a civilian journalist in May-June 2011. He blogs about military topics at www.redbullrising.com. His poetry and nonfiction is published or forthcoming in The Corn Belt Almanac, Midwestern Gothic, So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, Spillway, and the first three editions of the anthology Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, published annually by Southeast Missouri State University Press.

Oct 15

That Which Eludes

by Christopher Brown

He sat in the boardroom and watched the clock hands slowly tick by. Their moving extremities, distinguishable by sound, overshadowed the humdrum background noise of his boss. The cadence continued in a rhythm that defined his life. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Oct 9

On The River Ben Hai That Separates The War

by Raymond Keen

Streams of youth
were washing
on the banks of the Ben Hai,
near Dong Ha and Cam Lo,
on this river that separates the war.
And they were washed away
as silently as the ending
of a morning’s rain,
never to be seen again.

Raymond Keen’s first volume of poetry, Love Poems for Cannibals, was published in February 2014. His drama The Private and Public Life of King Able will be published in 2015. Since 2010, Raymond’s poems have been accepted for publication by 24 literary journals. Raymond spent three years as a Navy clinical psychologist with a year in Vietnam (July 1967 – July 1968 He worked as a school psychologist in the USA and overseas until his retirement in 2006. He lives with his wife Kemme in Sahuarita, AZ. They have two grown children.

Oct 5

Just the nine of us

by Kevin Neirbo

It had been a long, mild day in our ambush site. We occupied a small circle of dirt, nestled in the reeds along the river. Our five man team passed the time, trying our best at silence, talking in low voices, moving slowly and deliberately. Quietly snacking on trail mix, beef jerky, tuna, and blades of grass, we gazed at the river’s current and listened to the quiet buzz of our radio. The low hum of the static and the occasional exchange between other battalion call signs created a sense of homesickness from our “family” back at the patrol base. At the same time, I welcomed it as it provided a fleeting moment of security. While we might be here alone at the moment, our brothers were not out of touch.

Oct 2

Refuge

by Caroline Keyser

He takes her hand and squeezes it tigher. “It was kinda hard to watch,” he admits. He stares at the ground and pulls his patrol cap down tighter, averting her gaze.

She stands with him for a long minute, holding his hand tightly and staring intently over his shoulder at the cars and Humvees passing behind them, not daring to intrude on his private hell. His uniform conceals his scars, his sunburns, his personal opinions. But it’s not bullet-proof, and his vulnerability has seeped out finally, at a moment when he feels safe. She feels awed that he has chosen her to be the one person to witness this forbidden side of him, to see him at his most fragile. She wants to cry, but knows she can’t – her release would be the breaking point for him, and after all, they’re in public and he’s in uniform.

She wonders briefly what exact image embedded in his mind prompted this. She begins mentally running through the possibilities, scanning memories of news reports and his accounts of his daily work, and quickly stops herself. It does no good to torment herself like this and the answer doesn’t matter anyway. She releases his hand and wraps her arms around his neck, embracing him. He leans his weight on her and she holds him tighter. They’re being conspicuous, and they both know it. At any moment, someone could walk by and see what they’re doing.

Moments before she knows she’ll have to let him go, she places her mouth next to his ear, and whispers, “It’s not real anymore. You left it all over there. It’s not real any more.”

Caroline Keyser is a freelance writer married to an Army officer and Iraq veteran. Her work has appeared in GI Jobs, Costco Connection, and Georgia Magazine.