THE STORY SO FAR

It doesn’t matter what page
of the book you’re on, for there is always

what has happened and what will happen and
what is happening now, sugar maples

flaming into fall, Bradford pears budding white,
oaks and elms shivering, winter naked,

the long note of someone’s loved one flat-lining, the
greasy prints of noses on the neonatal glass,

Achilles caressing Patroclus’ body, smearing ash,

water dripping from Tess’s fingers to the fevered forehead
of Sorrow the Undesired, the used-up mare

of Raskolnikov’s dream toppling
under lashes from laughing peasants,

the reflection of Frankenstein’s creature
as it ponders the nature of the hideous,

whether you will be the hero of your own life
or the R. P. McMurphy who, through no intent of your own,
saves someone else,

the Huck Finn poling down the river
towards freedom or the black Jim beside him
poling towards another kind of freedom,

or Uncle Birdie Steptoe peering over
the stern of a stolen skiff in the deep place,
Willa Harper’s eyes peering back, hair waving

like the meadow grass you remember

from some previous or future page, some now
that is still now because it is

still here, now, unless
it’s the final page or the first,

and then it’s death and birth,
beyond and before which

nothing is written.

Robert L. Dean, Jr. is the author of Pulp (Finishing Line Press 2022); The Aerialist Will not be Performing: ekphrastic poems and short fictions to the art of Steven Schroeder (Turning Plow Press, 2020); and At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018). A multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig online, I-70 Review, Suisan Valley Review, Flint Hills Review, MockingHeart Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, and many other literary journals. Dean has been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas.