Friday, 26 June 2026

Jason Ryberg : Juanita

The moon, tonight, is                      
a bright street light, shining down
on a blanket made

of blue snow, and the
wind is a flurry of black
wings, one minute, and

a hushed whisper of
feathers, the next, and none of
the clocks in the house

can agree on the
time, and the radio is
hissing with the white

noise of the cosmos
(haunted with the sad ghost of
some long-dead Russian

composer), and the
phone has rung three times with three
different people, all

trying to reach some-
one named Juanita, and though
I don’t know any-

one named Juanita,
I sure do hope she’s alright
(wherever she is).


Jason Ryberg 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.