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
The past here seems always present;
winters piled on one another
like snowbanks weathered into
graying clapboard where every
third house seems for sale.
This antique shop smells of sea
salt and algae, so we exercise
our lungs and search for a maritime
telescope to ignite the whole world, make
ships on Atlantic horizons swell large
like rising tides. Continue reading
