PEONIES

Two old black leather
biker boots, as rough and cracked
as forty miles of

bad Kansas tarmac,
their biking days long over
and gone, now spend their 

time on the front porch,
watching the world roll by, but
now without always

feeling that primal
pull to outrun it, swapping
the same old tall and

tired tales of glory,
sprouting bright peonies of
laughter out into

the wild air from down
in the rich, storied soil at
the depths of their soles.

Jason Ryberg is the author of fifteen 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.