Mark Kraushaar, “Twenty-something”

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I sold my flute,
I sold my watch and my chair and my bed
and gave away my books and my TV and I took
the Greyhound bus to a town in Kentucky.
I thought I’d start over.
I thought if I could see things just as they are
(this street, this curb, sky, bottle cap, ballpoint)
I’d find out the real and the right now.
I’d locate the temperate,
gentle center of my life.
And so I walked a lot.
I’d think, Here I am, and, This is it.
I’d think, These trees, this park, this life.
This is it. This is it.
But what are you doing? my sister asked.
First she called and then she drove down from Wisconsin.
We were standing outside Kramer’s Department Store.
Maybe I wasn’t so sure anymore.
I guessed I didn’t know.
I said, I’m living.
A city bus passed and somebody waved.
Then a dog walked by.
This, I said.
And then I said it again.

Falling Brick Calls Local Man is the 15th book to win the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison English department. The collection also includes “We Regret to Inform” (from The Gettysburg Review) , “Dear Mr. Whitman” (available in a PDF of an issue of Beloit Poetry Journal which includes several other Kraushaar poems).

8 April 2009 | poetry |