By Kevin Grauke

With my penultimate match, I light this candle.
Too bad there’s not a god somewhere to breathe
in its scent, to feel its flame. It shines in my dark
room alone, the same as in the larger (the largest)
dark. All alone, it gutters. Like a tumbling meteor
or a cold deathbed, all alone. Nonetheless, I light it.
Because something has to come from doing so,
doesn’t it? An offering proffered to nothing
can’t simply be just that much more of nothing.
It has to be something, even if only just barely.
The effort makes it so. In its own small way,
you might say its tiny heat becomes, itself,
the divinity. With my ultimate match, I light
a second candle as an offering to the first.

---

Kevin Grauke has published poems in The Threepenny Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Minnesota Review, Ninth Letter, and The Louisville Review, among 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 in late 2026. He teaches at La Salle University and lives in Philadelphia.