If Magic Could Truly Trick Us
Yes, I could write a poem about it—or even for it
I suppose—but to what end? And for what good?
Especially now, nearly thirty years later.
I don’t honestly know. But such good things do
get said about poetry, about its powers to heal,
to soothe. Might it work a wonder here?
And if not a wonder, might it be a balm at least?
(Forgive me, I’m new at this, just as new
as I would have been to it—and it to me.)
Yes, it can be so many things here. That’s the beauty
of it, though there’s nothing beautiful about it here,
not when it is for you what it is for me: so awful,
not the least for its honesty. For me, it’s us, our flesh
arrested. And dreams. I’m sorry, this is as transparent
as I can be. It’s also a dark lot east of Greenville when
it (though now not even that), brought you down,
and I had to hold you up, hold you tight against me,
to keep you from crumbling to the oily concrete.
No, I’ve drawn us back too close. A distraction
is needed. So, imagine now a crescent moon
of cards before you, a smear of blackredwhite,
numbers and faces. You know how this goes—
pick a card, take a peek, return it to the deck.
After my shuffle, I’ll then pluck it from inside
an apple just cut in half or maybe the pocket
of a passing stranger, amazing you. But
that’s not quite how it will go this time.
No, the card you pick today is it, yours alone,
though I know it, too, because it is (and always
has been) also mine, though never quite as much.
Watch: I’ll even set fire to the other fifty-one,
to keep our shared secret safe, secure. All I ask
of you now is this: fold it and fold it and fold it
yet again (like cells dividing, but in awful reverse)
and set it on my tongue with a spoiled wine.
I’ll swallow it down for both of us forever.
Small Town Funeral
The dark suits of fathers hang low and large
on the raw bones of eight young men so quiet.
Sixteen sleeves slap in wintry wind, pennants
at half-staff. Eight aching hands—four lefts,
four rights—emerge to grip eight huckles
and, at the slow nod of the funeral director,
a woman whose comfort with every shade
of death scares them, hoist the pine casket
free of the trestles that the young men know
are just sawhorses cloaked in somber cloth.
Inside it are many men: grandfather, father,
husband, uncle, cousin, brother, and the son
of parents passed. All are still inside (except
for the occasional jostling). All are grateful
to these good boys now struggling up the steps
of the simple chapel. As if part of the service,
it has started to snow. The sullen flakes are so
fat and slow they hardly seem to be falling at all.
Above, the deep bell swings, rings. Swings, rings.
Men as young as these are still strangers to death;
none knows a toll comes for each year of life.
Soon they’ll be inside, warm, seated with family,
but until then, they’ve got more steps to climb,
more bearing to do. In their shoulders, they feel
the gravity of the man, and inside themselves, too.
His being no more is a chilly stone set just above
the buckles of belts from their fathers’ skinnier days.
Prickles of ice shock the backs of their hands, necks.
Each is afraid of losing his grip, of letting the man
down. He, meanwhile, fears he’s too much for them.
The doors are opening now. Ahead, the sanctuary awaits.
Candles, flowers, more sawhorses blanketed in black.
Over the years, they’ll each be borne the same, by sons
naive of what the dead learn well. The count. The knell.
Afterlife
My loved dead live
in me those who
protected me
now I protect
carrying them with
care the way
they carried me
now eggs held
cupped in the palms
of cautious ribs
and within those
eggs more eggs
their own loved
dead before I lived
Kevin Grauke has recently published poems in The Threepenny Review, Ninth Letter, The Louisville Review, The Minnesota Review, and Bayou. He’s the author of the short-story collection Shadows of Men, and a second short-story collection, Bullies & Cowards, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. Insecurity Risks, an essay collection, is forthcoming from Belle Point Press in 2027. He teaches at La Salle University and lives in Philadelphia.
Innisfree 42
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