After Brunch Journal

I’ve heard that the great

funnel cloud of memory

begins at the tip

of a phonograph

needle and ends at the tip

of a ball point pen,

that a poem fades

faster than a rub-on rose

tattoo, that your hand

never forgets the

feel of a coffin handle,

that tornadoes are

often brewed inside

teapots and baby teeth sewn

in the shady soil

beneath a hangin’

tree and a full moon grow in-

to snapdragons, and,

most importantly,

Peacocks only dance to the

music of thunder.

About the Author

Jason Ryberg is the author of twenty-five 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 work has appeared in As it Ought to Be, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Thimble Literary Magazine, I-70 Review, Main Street Rag, The Arkansas Review and various other journals and anthologies.

His latest collection of poems is “And When There Was No Crawfish, We Ate Sand (co-authored with Abraham Smith, Justin Hamm and John Dorsey (OAC Press, 2025)).” 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.