November
Though not the first or last in the order of the circular march of the musical chairs of the months, through the slowly whirling carousel of the seasons, still, November just may be the oldest of them all, with the most dense and complicated lineage, the most pure but most misinterpreted of motivations and the deepest, most valid reasons to drink too much whiskey and sing the blues late into the night.
Help Us Help You
A wish that grew from egg to tadpole to bird to the story behind the bigger story with the opposable thumbs and opposing truths, and all the lights on in its caves like a hive where even your phone or a very old map won’t help you locate a clue or footnote, even, concerning what you may have done or not done to help us help you to decipher the dreams that you say -quote- “you barely remember dreaming.”
Jason Ryberg is the author of fifteen 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 The Great American Pyramid Scheme (co-authored with W.E. Leathem, Tim Tarkelly and Mack Thorn, OAC Books, 2022). He lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.