Robert L. Dean, Jr.
The Scar
I feel them on the inside
of your mouth, run my tongue
over the tattooed history of you.
Nightmares, you say. I want to
cast them out but you refuse
to believe I am your Christ
and there are no swine passing
by and, indeed, I have no gash
in my side for your doubts to probe.
I turn my head to tell you tonight
you'll be with me in paradise. You
suck in your cheeks and bite down,
eyes wide. I rebuke the storm and still
you quake. Water into wine, nothing.
My last miracle. Your next scar.
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.