Robert L. Dean, Jr.
One Fine Fall Day Mr. Pickles Makes a Cameo
John's Animal World
has closed its doors. Ridden,
gut shot, into the sunset. Ahead
looms winter like the Teton massif.
Road kill litters the highway.
Geese explode lake calm,
skim the mirror's surface.
Seared against the beetling sky
reflections swarm like gnats.
Caught in the spokes
of memory, a hamster
lies, twitching.
Come back, John.
Come back.
Bio
Robert L. Dean, Jr.'s work has appeared in Flint Hills Review, I-70 Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Illya's Honey, Red River Review, River City Poetry, Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity, and The Wichita Broadside Project. He read at the 13th Annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in April 2018 at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. His haibun placed first at Poetry Rendezvous 2017. He was a quarter-finalist in the 2018 Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry contest. He has a book coming out in December titled "At the Lake With Heisenberg," with Spartan Press, Kansas City, MO. He has been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas.