Wrath Bearing Tree

From the December @WrathBT - a harrowing account of illness and parental love from Jennifer Crystal's 'One Tick Stopped the Clock':

“Can’t you give her something for the pain?” My mother pleaded with whoever was in the room, someone in pink scrubs.

“We can’t give her anything until a doctor sees her.”

“Then, please get a doctor,” my mother cried.

"They’re all busy with other patients,” the woman replied. “There are several people in more serious condition than your daughter.”

wrath-bearingtree.com/2024/12/new-no…

A selection a day from our last issue of the year. Here, powerful poetry in December's @WBT.

"Hearts and Minds," by Nathan Didier

We came to provide help that you didn’t want.
We came to provide security you didn’t need.
We came to provide schools that you didn’t care about.
We came to provide a government that didn’t work.
We came to provide democracy you didn’t understand.
We came to provide infrastructure you wouldn’t take care of.
We came to provide a better life that you didn’t ask for.
And we kept spilling our blood and couldn’t understand how you could be so ungrateful.

wrath-bearingtree.com/2024/12/new-po…

photo by @wrathbtpoetry

Catch up on the last @WBT of the year!

Fiction, Michelle Brady, "Thirty Broken Birds"
"[we] drove dazed & shaking back to camp. But before we left, they agreed to provide us water and internet, so the Major said all in all, it was a successful journey."

wrath-bearingtree.com/2024/12/new-fi…

The new COLLATERAL LITERARY JOURNAL is out! Come support our best buds (and literary conference table pals) at Collateral! The military writing community is a close one, folks. Amazing work from writers on themes of war, peace, loss, love.

collateraljournal.com

It's almost Derby time. Here, editor @Andria816 reviews C.E. Morgan's amazing 'The Sport of Kings,' about intersections between racism & horse racing. It's fascinating, moving, bonkers, Darwinian, everything. Did you know the man who rode Aristides to victory was a former slave?