Kevin Grauke ~ Three Poems

Written from Row 14, Seat B 

I feel sor­ry for the flight atten­dants, how duti­ful­ly
they try to pre­pare us for dis­as­ter by point­ing here,
and here, and pulling on the loose end of the strap
like so. They say the near­est exit may be behind us

and that hits so pro­found­ly true that I start cry­ing.
Oxygen will be flow­ing to the mask even if the bag
does not inflate. And always secure your own first.
To hell with those requir­ing assis­tance, understood?

I nod to let them know that I, too, can be iron-heart­ed.
I then learn the life vest’s secret, how it’s hid­den beneath
my seat, and how to inflate it, too, but nev­er in the cab­in,
which makes me then want to so bad. I imag­ine swelling

a bal­loon to ful­ly fill a room. My cush­ion, as a bonus,
may serve as a flota­tion device. I look around at every­one,
their ears plugged. When we splash into waves, I’ll bob
among the last of the flight’s inat­ten­tive, thrash­ing.

~

For 718 N. Patrick

I broke my glass­es today, so I’m writ­ing this blind,
writ­ing by feel, as it were, trust­ing my tap­ping fin­gers
to know the way over the riv­er and through the woods
of November’s snowy drifts. My grand­moth­ers are gone,
one before I was born, the oth­er eigh­teen years ago.
The one I knew is buried in Erath County, the pro­claimed
Cowboy Capital of the World. Bandera, two hun­dred
miles to the south, claims to be it, too. One has to be wrong.
Grandma wouldn’t have cared. She was a painter
of fields and flow­ers, and of fields full of flow­ers.
Wranglers nev­er crossed her frames. Near the end,
when all of her was as fee­ble as her eyes, she willed
away each can­vas with a name on yel­low­ing tape.
Dad got my favorite: her house, soft­ened by rare snow.

~

This Ends with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless

Pissed for no rea­son that I can now recall,
I once locked myself into the only bath­room
in the house. This was at Christmas, at a par­ty.
With me, I brought a tall­boy six­er of lager and

my anger. This was in grad school thir­ty years
ago, back when I still expend­ed silent rages
freely. I remem­ber the kick­ing and the bang­ing
on the door, the shout­ing. Meanwhile, I drank
all my bot­tles on the can. (Where did every­one
piss? In the night’s snow? This was Buffalo.)

Eventually, I woke muzzy in the tub, addled,
and when I final­ly emerged, my friends had left
for me a world of butts and sour emp­ties. And
on the turntable wheeled a record, silenced.

~

Kevin Grauke has pub­lished poems in The Threepenny Review, The Cincinnati Review, New Ohio Review, Ninth Letter, and The Louisville Review, amongst oth­ers. He is the author of the short-sto­ry col­lec­tions Shadows of Men and West of Destry, and a third short-sto­ry col­lec­tion, Bullies & Cowards, is forth­com­ing from Cornerstone Press. He has an MFA from Texas State University and now teach­es at La Salle University in Philadelphia.