Jason Ryberg

1)Heavy Doth Hang the Head that Wears the Hubcap Diamond Star Halo


The Angel of Death
is a crow pecking at some-
thing in the gutter,

and the folds of the
wind’s black velvet curtains sweep
back and forth across

the sidewalks and streets,
shuffling a flood of dead leaves,
Styrofoam cups and

candy wrappers, here
and there, and the faint strains of
a mysterious

violin seem to
be following us through the
dark twists and turns of

this unfamiliar
city, and the full moon is
looking right through us

with its wide owl’s eye,
our every step jingling with
keys and spare change (though

there’s really no such
thing as spare change or spare time,
for that matter, and

the locks to all our
keys have been switched), and a spray-
painted piece of ply-

wood that’s boarding up
a broken window in an
old burned-out warehouse

reads heavy doth hang
the head that wears the hubcap
diamond star halo.

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.