1) Plot Hole


The light at the end
of the tunnel turned out to
be a gaping plot 
hole in my argument,

     so, I was forced to freestyle.


2) Psychic Warfare


I’m still convinced that
someone in their employ was
waging psychic war-
fare upon me in order
     to gain access to all my
     family’s secret recipes.  


3) Places of Residence


Is there a name for
the frequent dreaming of one’s
     former places of
     residence, specifically
     dreams of still living there-in?


4) Daffodils, Sweat Bees, Helicopters


Daffodils in an 
old salsa jar half-full of
well water, sitting 
     on an old deck table in
     the sun, while sweat bees circle               
     around like helicopters.




5) Progress, If Not Victory, So Much


A
          mile
     or two
                    of sun-cracked
           two-lane blacktop with
                            about three feet of a gravel
shoulder, sloping off to a ditch by the side of the
                    road, an old mailbox full of bullet holes,
    over-flowing with who knows how many days?
weeks? months? of mail; and there’s something 
                              about the smell of
                newly laid tarmac first thing in
        the morning that for
                             some reason
                       always
                                    makes
                                                me
                                         think
                                                   of
                                                   progress.




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).” 
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.