Poetry: Selections From Jason Ryberg

Country Club Teeth and Wishbone Luck

He was all wind and

     swagger, with perfect country-

     club teeth and wishbone

     luck ( and a ring of Jesus

     fire that could deflect bullets).

Banjos in the Night

The cicadas are

playing sorrowful banjos

     in the night, gears and

     cogs begin to collude, and

          the stars finally roll out.

Sliding Doors

The faint smell of rain

flushed into the convenience

store by the sliding

doors, which seemed to open and 

     close with a mind of their own.

Memos

It would seem the old, 

leathery lizard of the 

hind-most part of our 

     brain, down in its sub-sub-base-

     ment, is still receiving all 

     our inter-office memos.

Reborn

Fly-fishing one day

in the River of Life, I

     was suddenly pulled

     down into its roiling depths by 

     one of its own violent

and notorious

undertows, only to be

     spat out as someone

     else / somewhere else down the line

     of a river I’d always

believed one couldn’t

step in twice, let alone fly-

     fish or be reborn 

     (or is it the river of 

     time that I’m thinking of?).

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 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 latest collection of poems is “Fence Post Blues (River Dog Press, 2023).