He stalks the red brick jungle, high noon on the Fourth in black denim and tee, VFW gimme cap stitched with blood-threaded gold of some misted rice-patty sunrise, cockatoo bobbing on lopped limb, extension of his own right arm, probe, offering, plumage of truce, crest of napalm fingers, clipped-wing contradiction, Diogenes with an M16, crossing the line into some secret Cambodia of pitched horseshoes, judge and jury barbecue, and country karaoke.

don’t let them get the Ice Cream Social 
cause then it’s the Lions Club Pancake Feed 
the Shriner’s Parade 

and, God forbid 
Brian Clark 

as Elvis 

Bamboo rustle impersonates prairie whisper, words escape. Tango Charlie to base: Festive villagers oblivious to dominoes. Collaboration. Or the breeding ground of contempt. Insinuation fermented long since, vineyard and vintage stenciled into ox-blood belt, squeezing out fruitiness of swished and swirled and spat out Canada. Flowered children bloom into dot-coms. Are these not my progeny. Concealment the only solution. I’m a stranger here myself. Suffer the little ones

crying, naked, running, burned forever in Pulitzer Prize-winning AP agony, Kent State student bodies, soldier boys spilling their guts, shaved ice, hot dogs, spun candy, all over this Main Street heartland parade ground. And here is where he stops, the babes not yet in arms, circling the bird around them like some albino Huey coming in for the kill, it’s them he’s after, after all, inoculate early and often. Run, scream, hide. The cure is worse than the disease.

Someone’s closed the border crossing. I hang from the wire in no man’s land.

But when the bird-man speaks, when he makes his pitch, lowering his limb to kid-stroke level, it’s as one mother’s child to another, harmless as hula-hoops and Black Jack gum, the tats on his arm with all the menace of Popeye:

say Hello, Buddy 

bark like a dog, Buddy 
laugh, Buddy 
cry, Buddy 

weep, Buddy 
weep 

Head cocked, one beady eye on me, considering perhaps an airline ticket to Winnipeg, Sergeant Major Buddy shits on the sidewalk. War, after all, is hell.

And I watch him go, this savior, this soldier, this Larry Vietnam 68-69 and his sidekick, blending back into the crowd, the bricks, the mortar, the lady with the blue-ribbon pie, the Dairy Queen on the corner, the John Deere dealership on the edge of town, the wheat fields along the highway, the night at the edge of the day, camouflage, anonymity, familiarity, all of the above, working in his favor.

Or is it the slightly slack-jawed mouth, the gently loping gate, the village idiot effect? The shell shock, night sweats, one foot on the buried pin of a fragmentation grenade? Or could it be that he’s always lived life on a slight tilt, on some distant monkish mountain, and this is simply

the way he walks 
the way he smiles 
mission accomplished 

sir 

the bird knows 
but he’s not talking 

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

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

His work has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared or is forthcoming in: Chiron Review; The Ekphrastic Review; Flint Hills Review; Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity; I-70 Review; Illya’s Honey; KYSO Flash; MacQueen’s Quinterly; Midwest Quarterly; MockingHeart Review; October Hill Magazine; Red River Review; River City Poetry; Sheila-Na-Gig online; Shot Glass; Suisun Valley Review; Synkroniciti; 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. 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 and the Kansas Authors Club. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills, and enjoys chess, backgammon, and film noir.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Finding the Door: One Writer’s Approach to Ekphrasis, an essay on craft by Robert L. Dean, Jr. in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 13, May 2022)

⚡ 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.

⚡ 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

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

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