Drinking Scotch with the Landlord
Not that unusual of a scenario, really, at least at first glance,
I guess, if you don’t think about it all, too much, that is,
until you eventually happen to snap-to from the situational
haze of the moment and realize that you’re sitting at your
landlord’s kitchen table, having stopped by to drop off the
rent, and his wife and daughter and granddaughter have
all gone to the mall or somewhere, FINALLY, Christ All-
Mighty, I love ‘em but Jesus! and next he’s suddenly yelling
at the GODDAMN ROYALS! on his tiny color tv that,
admittedly, must have been hot shit back in the 80s and,
to its credit, is still kicking and so is now kept out in the
kitchen for days like today when the ladies have taken
over the living room and big screen for the whole weekend,
but you guess he also kind of secretly prefers it this way
because it mostly keeps him away from their constant
yammering and squealing (and closer to the fridge and
his liquor cabinet) and you’re thinking you barely even
know this dude, who is now pouring the two of you both
another glass of Chevas Regal and telling you how things
were fucking done in this town when he was your age.
©2022 Jason Ryberg All rights reserved.
Jason Ryberg is the author of eighteen 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.
I first became familiar with Jason’s work at an event called The Pit, in Pittsburgh. My buddy Jason Baldinger read Jason’s work impressively. Keep writing and publishing Mr Ryberg!