I was somebody else in Kentucky. Well, at least I tried to be. But traveling is always messy. I hate sleeping on a hotel bed; it’s like sleeping on an oversized Ritz Crackers box, covered with a paper towel. Yet, when you sign in at the front desk of a hotel you can be anyone, anyone at all, whoever you dream up. So, when my best friend Jackie asked me to tag along to Kentucky, I said yes. Continue reading
wife before mother (mine)
They had the same name.
What are the odds?
Of him leaving her, Continue reading
Her gravestone is never too dirty to be new.
It isn’t, though. New, an ancestor
But ancestor is for the long passed. Continue reading
One balmy Indian summer evening stands out from all the pablum. It began, as had a thousand other nights, when Ira called. “Well, Mister B, looks like a beautiful night for the ponies.” Continue reading
In the Shenandoah Valley,
I-81’s long stretch of midnight,
there’s a metropolis of a truck stop,
a megaplex for tractor trailers
to rest like dragons on their loot
while drivers crowd into the diner
for the late night buffet. Continue reading
I remember, Sister Marie, that Mother held her finger to her lips, like this. ‘Soldaten,’ she whispered. I wanted to tell her how hungry I was, since we’d not eaten a thing since the day before, and that had only been the stale bread made of sawdust that you got at those roadside charity kitchens during the war. Maybe you don’t know those places because you only came after Germany surrendered. Continue reading
When I was three, filled with the exuberance of childhood,
I ran down a dirt road in the cloud of innocence and fell. Continue reading
Nearly everyone carries a high-definition camera in their front pocket or purse; it feels like we’ve already seen it all—especially augmented by digital editing, the Internet, and ultimately social media. One photograph to another, it’s becoming more and more difficult to decipher what makes a picture, a moment, special in these times, but those who have “an eye” somehow still manage to keep our attention.
William J. Stribling is Blacktop Passages’ most frequent contributor, and his photos accompany a great deal of our fiction and poetry. Continue reading
What’s Missouri but
A big endless white
Cast of clouds above my head? Continue reading
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