We will call it Como this time, though it could be 
a lake anywhere, any other time, but this version has our feet rooted 

in the here and now, once-upon-a-time soil of Virgil, Pliny, 
Caravaggio, Stradivari, two Popes, and the newest celebrity, 

an old woman who may or may not have existed 
for the past two years. In the plus column, her body, 

found last Friday, mummified, seated, either in the living 
room or at the kitchen table, depending on who is telling 

the story. For our purposes, she is staring out a picture 
window towards her garden, which has overgrown itself, 

though whether she sees the trees which are in danger 
from the high wind and which the officers have come to warn her 

may topple, is questionable. In the negative is the fact that no one 
saw her for those two years. How can this be, we ask? Where are 

the neighbors, the postman, who paid the electric bill, the water? 
Is there a car in the garage? The excuses given: We thought she 

moved. One excuse, really, but everyone gives it. And then 
the pandemic. Yes, she is old, and she would not have gone out 

in the pandemic. After she moved away, the pandemic. She would not. 
And we cross our legs, discomforted in our chairs, wondering, 

will this be us some day, who will check our gardens 
when the wind howls in the trees, who will knock at the thresholds 

of us when we pass unseen a week, a month, will we know when 
we cease to exist, do we, in fact, exist now, if no one perceives us, 

can we be observer and observed, what are our possible states 
of collapse, and doesn’t the cat die anyway, in all the endings? 

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

is the author of Pulp (Finishing Line Press, 2022); The Aerialist Will Not Be Performing, ekphrastic poems and short fictions after the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018).

Nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review; Flint Hills Review; Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity; I-70 Review; Illya’s Honey; KYSO Flash; MacQueen’s Quinterly; MockingHeart Review; October Hill Magazine; Red River Review; River City Poetry; Sheila-Na-Gig online; Shot Glass; Suisun Valley Review, The Ekphrastic Review; Thorny Locust; Waco WordFest Anthology 2022; and the Wichita Broadside Project.

A native Kansan, Dean studied music composition with Dr. Walter Mays at Wichita State University before going on the road as a bass player, conductor, and arranger; he was a professional musician for 30 years, playing with acts such as Jesse Lopez, Bo Didley, Frank Sinatra Jr., Vic Damone, Jim Stafford, Kenny Rankin, B. W. Stevenson, and the Dallas Jazz Orchestra. And he put in a stint with the house band at the Fairmont Hotel Venetian Room in Dallas. While living in Dallas, he also worked 20 years for The Dallas Morning News and made the transition from music to writing before moving back to Kansas in 2007.

Dean is a member of The Writers Place. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, along with a universe of books, CDs, LPs, and a couple dozen hats. He enjoys chess, backgammon, and film noir.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Hopper and Dean: Interview and poems in River City Poetry (Fall 2017)

⚡ Metal Man, ekphrastic poem inspired by a 1955 photograph of Dean’s paternal grandfather in the Boeing machine shop; published in The Ekphrastic Review (28 July 2018) and nominated for Best of the Net

⚡ Two of Dean’s ekphrastic works in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 5, October 2020): Impression, CNF after Berthe Morisot’s painting Woman and Child on a Balcony; and Eyes on You, a poem after Aurore Uwase Munyabera’s painting Conflict Resolution

⚡ Windmill, ekphrastic poem inspired by Dean’s maternal grandfather; published in KYSO Flash (Issue 11, Spring 2019) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. This poem is among half-a-dozen of Dean’s ekphrastic works published in KYSO Flash (Issues 11 and 12).

⚡ Llama, 1957, ekphrastic haibun inspired by Inge Morath’s photograph A Llama in Times Square; published in The Ekphrastic Review (13 January 2018)