Poems by Kevin Grauke

The Minotaur

sits chained to the floor in the heart of the labyrinth listening for the timorous tread of fourteen
virgins. Every nine years, they’re delivered to him to feast upon as a punishment to Athens, and
feast he does in a froth of limbs. But between these rare frenzies there is nothing. Only the                                                                                                                              vastness of passing time. Though no one cares to know, his name is Asterion, the starry one.                                                                                                                                  At night, he lifts his horn-heavy head to contemplate the dark glimmering above the maze,                                                                                                                              wondering if this— walls and sky, all he knows—is the world entire, not remembering how, in                                                                                                                              the black depth of his gaze Pasiphaë once saw the sparkle of galaxies as he suckled. Soon, a                                                                                                                        warrior will come, bearing in one hand a scarlet thread to guide himself home, and in the other a                                                                                                                sword to guide a monstrous beast deathward. But before the blade falls, the bully soul will bellow                                                                                                            defiantly (as there is no other way to bellow): “I am but a pawn of gods, who are nothing                                                                                                                                        but men’s pathetic dreams for themselves.”

Between Springer and Phil Ellena Street

Our daughter’s doctor has moved her office
              from the cozy house next to the grocery
              to what was once St. Michael’s Lutheran.

Built two years before our first President
              and then enlarged and rebuilt twice before
              our twenty-fifth was slain in Buffalo,

its stained glass now smears a waiting room,
              not pews, with the holy colors of Jesus,
              and exam rooms have made a honeycomb

of its nave and narthex. Fat popsicle sticks
              rather than the sacred Host flatten young tongues,
              and knees no longer bend in prayer but flinch

from the reflex tap of rubber hammers.
              We park, free El from her car seat, and pass
              the churchyard, where time has worn the markers

so smooth that fronts and backs look no different.
              Skipping along, our little girl pays no mind
              to this peculiar adjacency

of long-abandoned lives and robust youth
              but I do. While my wife accompanies
              her inside for her checkup, I walk

among the tombstones leaning jaggedly
              fore and aft like a mossed skull’s teeth
              and I contemplate my mortality,

though not nearly so extravagantly.
              No, I’m thinking merely of cold bodies—
              mine, my wife’s—and how El will eventually

About the author:

Kevin Grauke has published work in such places as The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, and Cimarron Review. He’s the author of the short story collection Shadows of Men (Queen’s Ferry Press), winner of the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. He lives in Philadelphia.

In the artist’s words:

Ellen June Wright: Why my pieces are numbered and not titled. When I began to paint abstracts, I tried to give each one a title but soon found that I was superimposing my idea of what the piece was or what the piece meant. After reflection, I felt that the viewer should be allowed to take in each work without bias, and naming pieces would definitely send observers in a specific direction as opposed to letting them find their own way to meaning.

I have had the privilege of having many of my poems published, but I also have a passion for visual art and photography. I studied art and art history at Rutgers College as an undergraduate, and I’ve had a lifelong desire to rekindle that passion. In addition to my poetry and photography, I am in the process of completing a watercolor project that includes 600 abstracts (7”x9” to 22”x30”) as a process of self-investigation and discovery. I am inspired by the works of European impressionists and of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Frank Bowling, Alma Thomas, Kerry James Marshall, Howardena Pindell, Jamaican Artist Cecil Cooper and others.

Wright’s work revolves around the power of color and the emotions and memories they evoke. She is inspired by the works of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Frank Bowling, Howardena Pindell, Jamaican Artist Cecil Cooper and others. Her art appears in LETTERS, Gulf Stream Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Breakwater Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Hole In The Head Review, Oyster River Pages, Kitchen Table Quarterly, NOVUS Literary Journal and others. Her work was included in the 2024 Newark Arts Festival and featured at the HACPAC in NJ.

To see more visit: https://8-ellen-wright.pixels.com/