GAS Featured Poet: Jason Ryberg

 

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. 

 

 

 The Slippery Slope

of Infinite Regression

Those far-off and fleeting buzzards 

of indeterminate feeling,

pyrning and gyring on the horizon,

those flittering moths of thought 

recently seen accumulating, at the oddest times,

on the shimmering quicksilver edge

of your mind’s magnificent fish-eye lens...

they’ve been rapidly devolving

into dubious notions and bizarre insecurities

concerning the teleological motions

of moth’s wings and the polar ice-caps of Mars

(and their collusion and subsequent influence

over your own precarious place

in the grand schemata

of people, places and things)...

And what about that sweet, young thing, there,

givin’ you the cheerleader sneer

from across the bar?

What is that, exactly, that she’s beaming out,

so radiantly? Loathing? Pity?

Some subtle shade of pathos, at best?

Or that grizzled, hoary Ahab

of a character shootin’ you the stink-eye

from the back window of a passing bus ...

Maybe it all adds up to nothing much,

but, something both all-knowing

and faintly unwholesome was

most definitely transmitted in the brief,

teleo-scopic instant of that

thousand-yard stare.

And those little clickity-clicks

and distant kettle whistles

and whispering phantoms of white noise

you’d swear, sometimes, just like

billowing clouds of gnats and other no-see-ems

(hosting the reincarnated souls

of grievous sinners, no doubt)

always mucking up your receptions

and transmissions.

What could their involvement be

in all of this and to what possible purpose

and degree?

Sabotage?

Subterfuge?

Hostile take-over?

Zen masters, fortune cookies

and bar-stool philosophers,

street-sweepers, antique dealers

and the capricious daughters

of Mexican generals, alike,

will tell you, 

it is precisely at these moments 

that one must immediately 

pull the rip-cord and nullify all contracts 

and pre-arrangements 

with the world,

let loose the horses,

release the hounds,

and set free the birds of primeval light

that have languished too long in their cages,

but, most importantly,

one must stalk and chase and feed,

voraciously, upon the hot, dripping, 

still-beating hearts

of wide open spaces.

GAS Featured Poet: Peter Cashorali

 "Peter Cashorali is a queer therapist formerly working in HIV/AIDS and community mental health, currently in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles."

Cleaning My Mother’s Apartment

 

Cleaning the apartment out,

Chairs and tables gone to friends,

What no one wanted taken to

The Goodwill a few blocks away.

But so much that had no use.

A drawer filled with rubber bands

And those colored plastic tabs

Used for closing bags of bread

In case one broke, just in case,

Used and smoothed out Reynolds wrap,

Almost empty jars of spices,

Ballpoint pens from other decades,

Archive of old electric bills,

Crossword puzzles, Gothic novels,

In the closet wire hangers,

Clothes addressing long-gone fashions,

Beneath the bed and its pillow

Crumpled Kleenex, clumps of dust,

In the bathroom medicines

For illnesses already cured—

Everything into the dumpster,

Bits of stuff that had outlasted

The one who made her sense from them,

Who had tended these resources,

Knowing that someday, someday.

Christmas Dinner

 

That Christmas morning I was up

at 5:30 to start cooking.

I made that cake I always made,

dates steeped in a little brandy,

grated nutmeg, best vanilla,

and while it was in the oven

waxed the table, set the silver,

toasted pine nuts for the green beans,

apple bacon, piloncillo,

fresh thyme and such costly beef

for the daube, to which I added

stout to make it extra rich.

One o’clock we sat to dinner.

He could only lift a spoonful,

asked could he lie down again.

The daube was so deeply bitter

it was like descending stairs

chiseled in a granite quarry.

Every dish was alkaline.

If I’d known it was our last,

better we’d sat on the floor

with a piece of bread and salt

and watched the sunlight cross the room.

But no way I could have known,

No way faced the obvious.                         

 

GAS Featured Poet: Arvilla Fee

 Arvilla Fee has been published in numerous presses, and her poetry books, The Human Side and This is Life, are available on Amazon. Arvilla travels with snacks, and her favorite quote is: "It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau. Website: https://soulpoetry7.com/

The Way You Waned

 

So round and full were you,

a beaming smile

upon your face,

 

the kind to wine and dine

and cast your light

around a room;

 

your gravity pulled me,

a tide so high

I lost myself

 

until you grew thinner,

then thinner still,

a mere razor

 

I could no longer hold

lest it leave a scar.

Middle-Age Monotony

 

creaking like an un-greased porch swing,

each bone protesting forward movements,

too stiff

too sore

one foot in front of the other,

one hand caressing an aching hip;

why do bodies give up so easily

when the heart is still throwing confetti

like it’s New Year’s Eve?

GAS Featured Poet: Dominik Slusarczyk

Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. His poetry has been published in various literary magazines including California Quarterly and Taj Mahal Review. His poetry was nominated for Best of the Net by New Pop Lit. His poetry was a finalist in a couple of competitions.

 

Tiny

I am tiny like

Stars shining

In summer skies but

When people

See me

They think I 

Am tiny like

Flies in cold drinks.

Whispering

I will whisper a

Song about

Starlight surfing on

Rippling ponds.

Bored people will

Hear me but

Their sight is

Stale and wrong.

I will whisper about

Apples amongst apples.

They are small and

Ripe and red

And green.

They belong in this song.

Whisper with me.

Whisper about

Wind shouting at trees.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Craig Kirchner

 Craig Kirchner is retired, and thinks of poetry as hobo art. He loves the aesthetics of the paper and pen, has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. After a hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Wise Owl, Chiron Review, Dark Winter, Spillwords, Fairfield Scribe, Unlikely Stories, The Main Street Rag and several dozen others. 

 Passed

 

 

We rushed up from Jacksonville,

cop in Emporia said 95

was not the speed limit, 

said I was a threat on the road,

after he had driven across the median 

with a spotlight in my eyes.

My Dad had gotten a ticket in Emporia.

 

4 AM, we got there

he was on a morphine drip.

Mom let me spend some time alone,

I don’t know if he could hear me,

but I told him the story about the ticket,

I thought he smiled,

and then he was gone.

 

Hurricane Floyd made a funeral

a challenge, carrying the coffin

could have been a disaster.

They offered to postpone, Rofie said no.

I threw my suit away, when it was over,

my thought was he wouldn’t 

have had it any other way.

 

Remembering him years later,

is like wandering empty, endless doors

of no hellos, good-byes.

The holidays seem haunted with hurricane 

savagery, reminiscent of his sense of humor.

The doorbell rings, no one’s there,

ever since Dad died.