It begins open mouthed, 
with what doesn’t roll off the tongue, 
a question unanswered, 
though you have asked me no 
questions. Why not? I ask myself. 
Am I unworthy? Uninteresting? 
Am I, perhaps, forked tongue retracting, 
jaw hinges closing, untrustworthy? Even I 
can’t answer that one. Even I 
mistrust myself. 

Begins before that, when your eyes find 
mine, tell me they are lost, 
and I wonder whose eyes yours are whispering of, 
though, of course, I know, 
my slitted pupils gauging 
distance to target. 
Sated you seem to be. Maybe 
this is want you need, not to be 
acknowledged. Or what I want. 
Or we. Yes? 

A shadow rears its head. 
Yours? Mine? 
A footfall and 
we slither away, serpents 
in a downpour of moonlight. 
Illumination limits your speech. My reasons 
are a rustle in the grass. I am 
unreasonable, a dumb animal, oblivious 
to all but oblivion. Or so it seems 
to me now, playing back the hiss of us. 

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. 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 and the Kansas Authors Club. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crosswalk Jesus: A Moment in Four Facets, prose poem by Robert L. Dean, Jr. published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 25, September 2024) and nominated for Best Small Fictions 2025

⚡ At the Lake with Schrödinger’s Cat, poem by Dean published in MacQ (Issue 21, January 2024) and nominated for the Pushcart Prize

⚡ Breath of the Lord, ekphrastic poem by Dean after a photograph by Jason Baldinger, published in MacQ (Issue 19, August 2023) and nominated for Best Spiritual Literature 2024

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

⚡ 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)