Standing at the Intersection of Critical Mass and Event Horizon

Jason Ryberg’s poems ought to be tackled in front of a plate of runny eggs and hashbrowns, late night in some greasy spoon diner where you can still smoke cigarettes, where truck drivers and salesmen with briefcases full of drugs and lewd secrets and the murderers from Capote’s In Cold Blood all might stop to eat on the same night, under a moon like the atomically radiant skull / of a bald and diabolical clown. His books should come pre-worn, covers already tattered and stained with unidentified life fluids, favorite pages scribbled on and half-loosed from the binding. Each of Ryberg’s lines should be read in a gargle-y, Tom Waitsian rumble that embodies the boogeymen that hide inside his images. Folks, this stuff is weird, wild. And even better, this stuff is good.

-Justin Hamm,