![\"mark-kraushaar.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/mark-kraushaar.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nI sold my flute,
\nI sold my watch and my chair and my bed
\nand gave away my books and my TV and I took
\nthe Greyhound bus to a town in Kentucky.
\nI thought I’d start over.
\nI thought if I could see things just as they are
\n(this street, this curb, sky, bottle cap, ballpoint)
\nI’d find out the real and the right now.
\nI’d locate the temperate,
\ngentle center of my life.
\nAnd so I walked a lot.
\nI’d think, Here I am<\/i>, and, This is it<\/i>.
\nI’d think, These<\/i> trees, this<\/i> park, this<\/i> life.
\nThis is it<\/i>. This is<\/i> it.
\nBut what are you doing<\/i>? my sister asked.
\nFirst she called and then she drove down from Wisconsin.
\nWe were standing outside Kramer’s Department Store.
\nMaybe I wasn’t so sure anymore.
\nI guessed I didn’t know.
\nI said, I’m living.
\nA city bus passed and somebody waved.
\nThen a dog walked by.
\nThis, I said.
\nAnd then I said it again.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nFalling Brick Calls Local Man<\/i><\/a> is the 15th book to win the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry<\/a> from the University of Wisconsin-Madison English department. The collection also includes “We Regret to Inform<\/a>” (from The Gettysburg Review<\/i>) , “Dear Mr. Whitman” (available in a PDF<\/a> of an issue of Beloit Poetry Journal<\/i> which includes several other Kraushaar poems).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}