~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Kevin Grauke

Such Great Potential

Though I neither smoke nor drink

hard liquor, I promised myself a stogie

once it happened, plus a margarita

flush with the most expensive tequila.

This was a pact I made with only my

self, meant to motivate me as I worked

toward my promise’s fulfillment. Inevitable,

they’d certified, and I’d agreed with them all,

those smart people. This was just yesterday,

if yesterdays can stretch back for years.

Never meant to be more than silliness,

that costly cigar with the Cubanesque name

and that drink with its salted lip and lime 

have since taken such joy in teasing me

from afar—one with curling blue smoke,

the other, winking rocks of crystal.

Drowning the fire of the first in a splash

of the last, I now proclaim it done. Unbegun.

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. "Bullies & Cowards" is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. He lives in Philadelphia.