Jason Ryberg
Aunt Kelly’s Dodge Ram
She drove an old blue Dodge Ram pick-up with a
shotgun hanging in the back window
and a Ram skull wired to the front of the hood for an
ornament. It had an eight ball
for a gear-shift knob,
a Kali
statue
on
the
dash,
a
necklace
of rabbit’s
feet and fuzzy dice
hanging from the rear-view mirror,
and eight-tracks of Black Sabbath, Sex Pistols, Parliament /
Funkadelic, Kiss, Zappa and Bowie in constant rotation,
as the stars should be.
Screen Door
From
the
heavy
stillness at
the heart of this huge
old house, one can hear the first
few notes of what has to be a Chopin nocturne, as
they come trickling down the hall and through
the screen door, out into the porch to twirl in
the air a while, like a calliope of chords or
invisible windchime of sad
arpeggios, then
are gently
swept up
and
cast
in-
to
the wind
Thirteen Rorscharch Prints
Rendered in (Faux) Haiku Form
for the King’s Birthday
1) Hemmingway staring
At a blank sheet of paper;
JFK looks on.
2) A barrel of rain
mistaken for a small pond
somewhere in Kansas.
3) A carnival mask
teaming with skinks and poppies
and one death’s-head moth.
4) Miles Davis caught shop-
lifting Don Byrd away from
the Jazz Messengers.
5) The Duende dreaming
of wildflowers, butterflies
and a lone coyote.
6) The moon shining through
clouds like a cop’s flashlight through
ghosts of gutter-steam.
7) A heart, like a frog
being fattened with sadness
to feed Love’s big snake.
8) A dragonfly’s mind
magnified a hundred times
before my mind’s eye.
9) Joan Miro standing
on top of Machu Pichu
with Minnie Pearl’s hat.
10) W.C. Fields
meets Frank James, Fox Theater,
St. Louis, ’01.
11) F. Nietzsche, S. Freud,
R.M. Rilke caught in a
Mexican stand-off.
12) Kafka discussing
literary theory with
a giant bed bug.
13) A glass of water,
a pint of the “black stuff” and
a John Powers, neat.
All Along the Railroad Tracks
The smell of rain and
the bones of a dead snake curled
along the railroad
tracks after the rain
has gone, dead grass along the
railroad tracks, an old
man, dead drunk (and may-
be dead) along the railroad
tracks, the wind playing
its sad old rusty
harmonica along the
railroad tracks, the ghosts
of slaves who never
made it north all along the
railroad tracks, some of
that smokestack lightning
cutting through the fog all a-
long the railroad tracks,
rail-road tracks, railroad
racks, all along them railroad
tracks, them rail road tracks…
Turning the Engine Over
I think today is
as good as any to start
off with a cup or
two of Uncle Mike’s
Triple Threat Octane, that, of
course, being extra
strong black java, black-
strap molasses and bourbon,
to get the engine
turned over proper
and idling, nice and smooth, at
a respectable
pace, so one can lace
their boots up tight and step out
into the world with
a new lease on life
and just the right amount of
fuck you attitude.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen 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, a couple of angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors. 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 latest collection of poems is The Great American Pyramid Scheme (co-authored with W.E. Leathem, Tim Tarkelly and Mack Thorn, OAC Books, 2022). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere n the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.