by JL Jacobs | Apr 26, 2017 | Fiction
Art Credit: Dawei Ding HEARTS AND MINDS This afternoon, using a broom cupboard scrounged from the shattered house, we buried a little girl who bled to death yesterday. We put in some blossoms and laid the girl’s leg in beside her. Then we lowered the cupboard...
by JL Jacobs | Apr 6, 2017 | Fiction
TWO WEEKS LATER HE FLEW OFF TO AFGHANISTAN AGAIN It’s New Year’s Eve. Mark’s lying across the bed, not moving. “This is too hard,” he says. Poor baby. I love him and try to be a good wife. Johnny and Megan love him more than their real...
by JL Jacobs | Apr 5, 2017 | Fiction
PTSD The woman stands in the doorway, looking through mist toward the lake and tall firs on the opposite shore. Behind her, a man wheels himself to the fireplace, takes an iron poker and strikes at the fire, as if beating back war rising from the flames. Curses and...
by JL Jacobs | Apr 5, 2017 | Fiction
BODENSEE They come for us just as we are leaving our lakeside villa, sold this morning for cash, a pittance in foreign currency. We escape by boat, all that we cherish in valises and sewn into our coats. We stand in the stern, watching tiny men scurry down the expanse...
by JL Jacobs | Apr 5, 2017 | Fiction
VOWS He was in country four months when the letter came. He read it again out back of the radio shack. Down the hill afternoon sunlight glinted off the flooded paddies. They were everywhere and he wondered if he’d ever get used to the smell. He took a deep breath,...
