Issue 13: | May 2022 |
Poem: | 161 words [R] |
And here’s Giuseppe, the billy goat, just now marauding his way onto the scene: horn’d brow set in permanent hung-over scowl above a fiercely territorial boogan glare, mouth mechanically masticating on a clump of grass like it was a big, fat wad of chaw; a low-hanging storm cloud of pissy indignation and simmering violence slowly cutting a broad swath through the gossiping gaggle of chickens, indifferent to their idiot jibber-jab and their blustering bully-boy alpha-rooster chaperones, as well (shiiiiiit, those prissy, puffed-up pea brains wouldn’t even dream in their deepest, most recessed rooster dreams about taking a shot at him) for he is the one, true and rightful king of this little bump of a hill on this little farm just outside Salina, KS. Out of some genetic sense of reverence and respect, no doubt, one is automatically moved to cover the family jewels whenever he passes.
—First published in Ryberg’s book Head Full of Boogeymen / Belly Full of Snakes (Spartan Press, 2020) and reprinted in Evening Street Review (Number 30, Summer 2021); appears here with poet’s permission.
is the author of fourteen 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, Are You Sure Kerouac Done It This Way!? (co-authored with John Dorsey, and Victor Clevenger), was published by AC Books in 2021.
Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, Missouri 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.
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