A Night Like This
Old
chairs
in a
circle where
the moon seems to stop
in its nightly patrol across
the sky, for just a few extra moments, and stare down
at the epicenter of this improvised amphitheater,
where, in the past, on
a night like this, there would have been some kind of
congregation gathered here to
witness, admire and
worship in
each their
own
way,
that
is
until
they gave it
up for glowing screens
and gossip (insert emoji).
Hauling Ass
A
long
empty
road taking
us away from our
past lives (of only hours ago)
and the sinking sun in the rear-view mirror, like a
burning ship pulling the whole sky down with it
into the briny deep of night, leaving
us a wall of black clouds, dead ahead, cracked, here and there,
with slivers of lightning above
a train, that’s hauling
ass along
the dark
edge
of
the
world.
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 Kicking Up the Dust, Calling Downthe Lightning (Grindstone Press, 2023). 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.
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