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Cycle of Operations – Joseph Sellman

Cycle of Operations

Clear front sight tip, center mass, slow steady squeeze,
Pull the trigger to the rear.
A sequence started a world away takes shape.
The trigger breaks, the hammer falls, the pin strikes the primer.
Powder exploding violently releasing a small green tipped
Copper covered piece of lead.
It passed through the barrel, the grooves forcing it to spin.
It lessens the effects of wind and heat.
It explodes from the barrel engulfed in flame,
Green tip slicing through the air, a small trail barely visible.
Following its journey, a small disruption in a large world.
It follows its path true, across fields and grass finding its home.
Passing through linen and flesh.
Finding bone and exploding, slicing through muscles and organs
Without discrimination.

Firing, extracting, ejecting, feeding, loading, locking, firing, extracting.
The cycle continues.
A split second that time fails to notice.
Somewhere a mother cries, a wife becomes a widow,
A child fatherless.
Clear front sight tip, slow steady squeeze

Who We Are

Military Experience and the Arts, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose primary mission is to work with veterans and their families to publish short stories, essays, poems, and artwork in our biannual publication, As You Were: The Military Review, periodic editions of Blue Nostalgia: The Journal of Post-Traumatic Growth and others. To the best of our ability, we pair each author or poet that submits work to us with a mentor to work one-on-one to polish their work or learn new skills and techniques.

Our staff is based all over the country and includes college professors, professional authors, veterans’ advocates, and clinicians. As such, most of our services are provided through email and online writing workshops.

All editing, consultations, and workshops are free of charge. Veterans and their families pay nothing for our services, and they never will.

Under our Publications tab, there are more than two dozen volumes of creative work crafted by veterans and their family members as well as a virtual art gallery. Our blog posts feature short pieces that cover a wide range of opinion editorials, literary reviews, and profiles on veteran artists and writers.

Please consider spending some time navigating our site and reading and seeing the fine work of veterans and their families from around the globe.

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