The Skin of This World, by Robert L. Dean, Jr.

Jumping Bison, by Skyler Lovelace (USA). 2017.

The Skin of This World

Conjure me whole. Flesh out
these ocherous bones. I have power yet,
bow-bent, tensile, waiting only

your release. See my potency,
that purple organ depending from
the blue of the sky you think

you see through me. Do not be
fooled. I contain heaven, earth. I
contain you. I will propagate

the plains of your imagining
with thunderous herds of times past,
days future, nows heretofore

unbegotten, shake the earth
once again when only your shadow is left
walking. In your secret bones

you feel me still, Nimrod, Orion,
Buffalo Bill, whoever you think you are
in this tomorrow of yesterdays,

of always renewing. And that blood
you fancy you see on the soles of my hooves,
trailing beneath me on the

ground, staining the skin
of this world, the sinew of the next,
that is on you, my brother,

and I am watching.

Robert L. Dean, Jr.

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!, and the Wichita Broadsides 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 been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in Augusta, Kansas.