Thousand-Yard-Stare by Jason Ryberg

It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place 
that stank of Pinesol, piss and stale beer,
and still had dispensers in the men’s room 
for glow in the dark condoms and French ticklers 
and other surprise novelty items,

and the big monkey behind the bar was named 
Earl or Jake or Curly and he kept a sawed-off 
table leg within reach at all times and gave you 
that thousand-yard-stare if you dared ask 
for anything with more than one ingredient,

and the jukebox hadn’t been changed-out 
in decades and the lunch special was always 
the same: pickled eggs, pork rinds and hot sauce, 
though I got the feeling that nobody 
ever ate it unless they lost a bet.

Jason Ryberg is the author of thirteen 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 Standing at the Intersection of Critical Mass

and Event Horizon (Luchador Press, 2019). 

He lives part-time in Salina, KS 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.