Yesterday, I crushed them
and smeared their brief light
across my cheeks: glowing war paint
for twilight battles fought house to house
until the porch light called me home.
Today, barefoot in the grass, I wait alone
for dusk’s dissolve and their arrival,
those gentle lantern-bearers guiding
the grateful summer night’s retinue
from yard
to yard
to yard.
Kevin Grauke has published work in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, Fiction, and Quarterly West. He is also the author of Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He’s a contributing editor at Story, and he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
