The clouds are rubbing
the moon’s bald head and wiping
his tears as they pass,
and the darkness all
around us is haunted by
the ghosts of hobos
and highway men, just
as the fossils of ancient,
prehistoric sharks
and whales vibrate and
call to us across time from
their resting places,
and a black cat bone
is hanging by a guitar
string from a rearview-
mirror, in which an
old house, alive and dancing
with flames and sparks and
the bright flashing red
lights of fire trucks and cop cars
can be seen on the
distant receding
horizon as the news comes
on the radio.
— JASON RYBERG
Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-two 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 lives part-time in Kansas City, Missouri, with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River.