I have a new essay in one of my favorite journals, The Hopkins Review. I wrote “One Who Wouldn’t Wait: Reunion Porn and the Search for a Literature of Homecoming” in the months leading up to the publication of Civilians. Here are the opening paragraphs of the piece:

It’s called reunion porn—that genre of video in which a wife is surprised by the return of a soldier. He’s still dressed in camouflage, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, as if he has just stepped off a transport plane and onto the tarmac after a 15-hour flight. He comes around the corner, entering a house or a store or even the echoing chamber of the House of Representatives in the U.S. Capitol. The camera captures the moment when she turns toward him. The wife raises her hands to screen the nakedness of her mouth, a sob already spilling out. And the husband approaches, his face now uncertain in the glaring light.

Not once during my husband’s military service did I wait by the water for his ship’s arrival. Many wives, I knew, shined their lips in a kissable color or slipped into dresses bright as tropical flowers. They held the corners of a piece of posterboard that read, WELCOME HOME!, standing in the damp breezes of Norfolk, their figures clustered together like an anxious bouquet.

“One Who Wouldn’t Wait” examines how military family reunions are often depicted (or, really, misrepresented) in popular culture and discusses what the best poets and essays get right about these kinds of homecomings. If you want to read more about The Hopkins Review, you can find information about the journal here.