The Red Barn Studio Museum is pleased to welcome back poet, writer, and editor Jason Ryberg as Artist-in-Residence from May 1–29. A frequent resident at the Red Barn, Jason brings his sharp wit and raw storytelling to another immersive creative stay.
Ryberg is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, six screenplays, and an ever-growing archive of short stories and notebooks. His latest book, Bullet Holes in the Mailbox (Cigarette Burns in the Sheets) (Back of the Class Press, 2024), continues his exploration of life’s grit, humor, and poetry in the everyday. 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, and he currently serves as an editor at Spartan Books and an artist-in-residence at The Prospero Institute of Disquieted P/o/e/t/i/c/s and the Osage Arts Community.
Visitors are encouraged to stop by, meet Jason, and experience his creative process firsthand. He currently lives in the Ozarks near the Gasconade River, sharing his life with a rooster named Little Red and a billy goat named Giuseppe, fitting companions for a poet drawn to the offbeat and unexpected.
My Own Personal Underworld
with apologies to Lester Raymer
It
would
seem he’s
part soldier,
harlequin and high
trapeze artist, this guy, I mean,
who visits me in my dreams, sometimes, like my very
own personal Virgil, giving me the 10-cent
guided tour through what appears to be
my own personal underworld (that, while not being
particularly hellish, by
any means, still has
a kind of
moody,
weird,
old
late,
late
movie
atmosphere
about it, as it
plays out beneath a circus tent,
let’s say, stitched together from silk bed sheets
and night gowns,
within the ruins of an old gothic cathedral
full of strangely calm black chickens.
-Jason Ryberg