Kevin Grauke

A History of the Newest Term of Venery

A rag of colts may very well be to a bed of clams
what a clam of beds once was to a colt of rags,
but a charm of finches is oh so precious,
as was wee Strayhorn, who once declared
flowers to be lovesome things, a fact knowable
only to a man loved as Swee’pea, though he was not
the baby found on a doorstep the same year Delano
claimed that fear is all there is to fear, my dear, a year
long before fear truly came into its own, which, for some,
was a year soon after, and for others this year ri’chere,
but always, regardless, the same year a wake of buzzards
first came to be known as a certainty.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Kevin Grauke has published work in The Southern Review, Cimarron Review, Sycamore Review, Blue Mesa Review, Sou'wester and Quarterly West, to name a few. His collection of stories, Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), won the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Originally from Texas, he teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.