When I got there, everyone was gone. 
Like the old pagans, fleeing when 
the sky swallows the mid-day sun. 

I turned over rocks, found tatters 
of shed skins. From the hayrick, 
a voice called to me: Your shadow 

preceded you. I burned the dry grass 
down. Cursed it for its impudence. 
Such stuff as dreams are made on, 

whispered the black ash. I picked 
a needle out from it, black and brittle 
as obsidian, and when I pinged it 

with a fingernail a nonsense lullaby 
donned housecoat and curlers 
and rocked me on its lap. Milk I drank 

and light peered in through the window, 
sparking the frost crystals cornered 
in the panes. Night fell, and the rocker 

was empty. Night fell, and I whimpered, 
and no one comforted me. Like the pagans, 
sleep fled. Only when the sun came 

did sleep follow. Sleep, my shadow. 
And when I got here, where everyone is 
gone, I spoke to the charred ground, saying: 

I do not dream. The white coats told me 
it’s just a lack of retention upon awakening. 
But I remember. I remember everything. 

The words clattered, chained shadows in the dark. 

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)