She's Gone, by Robert L. Dean, Jr

Woman and Loquat” © Hedy Habra 2022 Chinese ink and watercolors on rice paper.

She’s Gone

Perhaps she will just eat them out of hand. It’s spring,
after all, or some blurred line into another summer.

Perhaps, as she rubs her finger over the nipple of the stem
and recalls, from childhood, or a place like it, the tastelessness

of the skin, she will peel and discard the exterior, as she
often considers doing with herself, will sink her teeth directly into

the sweet juicy flesh, let it dribble down from the corner
of her mouth into the Han blue folds of her dress, let the sex

of it return to the Chinese mother, though her first dalliance
with such things remains secreted in the winged black lashes

of her eye, the nape of her neck cautiously exposed beneath
bound up volcanic rivers of obsidian hair, the surety of her jawline,

the slight inquisitive parting of her lips, the turquoise pendant hiding
the lobe of her ear, shielding the canal from whatever sounds

try to voyage this reverie of some prior life, some place,
some pool of time in which we have never swum. The ovules,

the stones, is she aware of the bitterness, the toxin, possible
death? The way she holds them, these double-edged fruit

of the sword of dreams, her posture, the slight curve
of her back, the smooth inquisitive knowledge in her face, says

Yes, and I will chance the world upon them, and we wonder
what world is chanced, if it’s ours, and, if not, how do we get there?

Robert L. Dean, Jr

Robert L. Dean, Jr.’s poetry collections are 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 Best of the Net nominee and a Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in many literary journals. Dean is a member of the Kansas Authors Club and The Writers Place. He has been a professional musician, and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas, midway between the Air Capital of the World and the Flint Hills.