He may be 2nd place 
but he’s rough, tough, 
and black-belted, 

a Stone Tiger Challenger, 
not afraid to let us know 

he can bad-ass bare foot 
break our jaw, knock us 

senseless with his titanium 
cranium, his studied mix 

of testosterone and Zen, 
not just another pretty face. 

Guardian of our Main Street, 
like it or not, he greets 
stranger and neighbor 

with the same down-turned 
horseshoe charm, marbleized 
stare overlooking everything, 

everyone, broad boxed shoulders 
trying to shrug our attention 
away from the fact 

he’s only half a man 
with no grip on reality 

and nothing hanging out 
his sleeves to grip it with. 

Do we let him be? Do we 
point out these certain flaws, 

disturb his pride of second place 
in the martial art of non-being? 

Haven’t we been here ourselves, 
in this window, on display 
on our worst days, our best, 
those random moments 

when the shit is flying 
and kicks and head butts 
yield no advantage? 

Haven’t we too 
pulled the Stone Tiger’s tail? 
And come out 2nd? 

We pass on by 
and trust that he, 
or some dummied-up 
mannequin manifestation of us, 

will be here always, 
watching over 

the ungraspable, unknowable parts 
of ourselves, fending off 
third and fourth place wannabes. 

Especially on a day 
like today, so deceptively 
calm and shitless. 

Van Wert, Ohio (photograph, 2023)

Copyrighted © by Jason Baldinger. All rights reserved.
Image appears here with photographer’s permission.

Jason Baldinger

is a poet and photographer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A former Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, he is co-founder and co-director of The Bridge Series. He’s the author of 15 books of poetry, the newest of which include: The Afterlife is a Hangover (Stubborn Mule Press) and A History of Backroads Misplaced: Selected Poems 2010-2020 (Kung Fu Treachery), and This Still Life with James Benger. Baldinger’s work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can hear him read his work on Bandcamp and on LPs by The Gotobeds and Theremonster.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Two Poems After Jason Baldinger, by Robert L. Dean, Jr., with Baldinger’s photographs Hinton, West Virginia (2022) and Walkersville, West Virginia (2022), in The Ekphrastic Review (3 December 2022)

⚡ Cold Water Glistens, a poem by Jason Baldinger in As It Ought To Be (23 November 2022)

⚡ the bag lady of boone, and 11 more of Baldinger’s poems at Mad Swirl: A Creative Outlet (July 2023 – July 2018)

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)