four poems

by Jayson Ryberg

1) Glow Skull and Whippoorwill

Yellow moon lurking

in the trees like a grinning

glow skull, and a lone

     whippoorwill off in the dark,

     somewhere, like an old record

     skipping, over and over…

2) Dreams of Tortuously Indifferent

and Unattainable Women    

First,

it’s

just the

low rumble

of thunder, like an

old delivery or trash truck     

making its schedule around town, waking you from dreams

of tortuously indifferent and unattainable

     women from your past, to

a cold gray morning of steadily dripping rain and

rivers in the gutters with at

least a single leaf

to carry

off who

knows

where

(and

you

with it,

maybe). But

then, the alarm sends

everything scrambling for cover.        

3) Bird in the Rain

Cloud                      

banks

that look

strangely like

early 20th

century socialist sculpture

have pretty much laid claim to the day, and the trees are

having an animated discussion with the wind,

      sending what’s left of their leaves to

scatter in every direction, and so far it’s been

one of those mornings where my mind 

is hopping ‘round from

puddle to

puddle

like

a

bird

in

the rain.

4) Somewhere Between

a cracked engine block

from a gran torino that’s

up on blocks out in

     the backyard and a baby

     found behind a dumpster in

     an alley somewhere downtown,

flame jobs and blowjobs,

wild prairie flowers and wild

prairie fires, the boom

     and clang of train yards and the

     chatter of beauty parlors,

     the could have and the Goddamn

I should have, the deep-

sea moan of whale song and the

harmonica hum

     of the beehive, the fusion

     reactor and the lone fire-

     fly’s flickering candle-wick.

BIO: Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel, and countless love letters (never sent). He is currently an artist-in-residence at both The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community, and is an editor and designer at Spartan Books. His work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies. His latest collection of poems is “Bullet Holes in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) Back of the Class Press, 2024)).” He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.