Bio

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five 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.

  I
have
  to ask
of the world,

every now and then,

the simple and honest question
  of how many pairs of cheap truck stop sun glasses have

I sacrificed to the various minor deities
and demigods of both the

rural and urban realms, and were these offerings
  at least duly noted and acknowledged and applied,
accurately, to the balance, be

it negative or positive, contained in the
Universal Ledger Books they say

sit locked-up where no one could ever sneak a peek at?

But I suppose I should just be
grateful I never
had to kill
a pig
or
goat
 in
some
bloody
ritual
 in the village square.