Standard Issue Guy-Drinking-All- Alone-at-the-Bar Poem by Jason Ryberg

I 

swear

to God

I didn’t

mean to write one more

standard issue guy-drinking-all-

alone-at-the-bar poem but the Rolling Stones were

coming on the juke box with All Down the Line and that

     song just blows the goddamn doors

off, and the place actually had Stag, on tap, and

White Label Evan, and then it

was ZZ Top with

Just Got Paid

and I

said

me

too,

pal,

me too,

and now look

what I’ve done. Oh well, 

maybe this one ends up with some 

girl’s number on it (only to be run through the wash). 

 

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, 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