Falling Brick Kills Local Man - Couverture souple

Kraushaar, Mark

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0299230848 ISBN 13 : 9780299230845

Editeur : University of Wisconsin Press, 2009

Synopsis

Falling Brick Kills Local Man is a daring and inventive collection of narrative poems rich with thoughtful and precise language. Mark Kraushaar writes about what moves him, whether that is the war in Iraq, the notion of synchronicity, the retelling of children’s stories, or a problem of recollection. Often inspired by newspaper stories or witnessed scenes, these poems are a refreshingly honest exploration of our interconnected and multifaceted world.

 

 

Finalist, Poetry, Midwest Book Awards

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Mark Kraushaar is the recipient of Poetry Northwest’s Richard Hugo Award and two Wisconsin Arts Board awards for poetry and has been a finalist for both the Walt Whitman Award and the May Swenson Prize. His poems are widely published and have been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2006; Motion: American Sports Poems; Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman; and Who Are the Rich and Where Do They Live.

Extrait. © Reproduit sur autorisation. Tous droits réservés.

I mean, the spinning Earth whirls east
and a dog walks wagging by.
I can’t explain.
Inflexible, garrulous, sad, anymore
we’re our own full time jobs.
Wasn’t Dad the best?
Didn’t light form in the doorways?
Didn’t the mailman come?
Look Jane. Oh, turn and look.
Past the market by the playground,
here we are, so unhip, so well meaning and bizarre.
—excerpt from “Dick and Jane”
© The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.

Falling Brick Kills Local Man

By Mark Kraushaar

The University of Wisconsin Press

Copyright © 2009 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-299-23084-5

Contents

How Lives Move Forward in the Same Moments.................................................3Stupid.....................................................................................5Everything.................................................................................7We Regret to Inform........................................................................8I Want the Power to Go Out.................................................................10At the Greyhound Station...................................................................11At Sherman and First.......................................................................13American Golden Eagle Flyer................................................................14Express....................................................................................17US Exhaust and Tire........................................................................19Gum........................................................................................21In Line at the Kwik Trip...................................................................23Heat.......................................................................................25Water Squirrels............................................................................27Dick and Jane..............................................................................29I Controlled Paul Molitor's Hitting Streak.................................................31Dear Mr. Whitman...........................................................................33Ray........................................................................................35Les Waverly: Secrets in Conversation.......................................................36Fast Loans.................................................................................38Personal Reasons...........................................................................40Twenty-something...........................................................................42We Choose Our Parents......................................................................43The Call...................................................................................45Wichita 67204..............................................................................47An Old Story...............................................................................49Valley Road................................................................................51Edward Hopper, Morning Sun 1952............................................................52Chloral Hydrate 500mg May Repeat Times One as Needed for Sleeplessness.....................541-900-CHAT.................................................................................56WWII Plane Found on Moon...................................................................58Ming's Imperial Palace, October 1975.......................................................60Free Throw.................................................................................62House of Chong.............................................................................64Kodachrome.................................................................................65Road Kill..................................................................................66Bat Boy Escapes............................................................................67Falling Brick Kills Local Man..............................................................68Jack.......................................................................................70Schuster...................................................................................72Unencumbered...............................................................................74The Message................................................................................76Tonight....................................................................................77Prognostic.................................................................................79This Is What Happened......................................................................80Mantra.....................................................................................82

Chapter One

How Lives Move Forward in the Same Moments

In Maine one day a man winds his watch while taking a leak. Suddenly, distracted by a child's shout or a train passing or the busy, gray fabric of his life so far, he pisses on his shoes. He pauses, looks down, and begins to curse. Meanwhile, and by this I mean at the same time precisely, in Seoul or Arena or Kiev another man nods yes and then yes again, it is late and he'll have to start home after all. This is at his best friend's house up the street. It's snowing. He pulls out his scarf and stands up. But it's strange all this; it's odd how lives move in the same moments so softly forward. How a lady selling baked clay beads in Marrakech, let's say, leans against a blue stucco wall and thinks of penmanship or fresh fruit while a boy in Dubuque starts work at a five-and-ten-cent store stamping figurines. It's almost a dance, I mean, or it's nearly musical the way some days one man's speech keeps time with another man's coughing or washing or writing reports. It's uncanny how as some man in Bangor, Maine, steps out of the bushes stamping his two flat feet in the leaves some other man in those same, invisible wide moments closes his best friend's closet and, dusting off his hat, starts home.

Stupid

What if, because of the familiar sound of a particular voice, a boy's dog comes when called. Come here girl, Good girl, and, Good Judy, so she trots straight over, tail quickly swishing. Now what if one late afternoon the boy arrives home after a day at the park where he's stabbed a bullet line drive thus assuring his own star status and saving the day for the Fritz Spray Paint Blue Devils. Or maybe he's struck out four times, heaving his bat at the backstop, swearing it's all the fault of the too bright sun or his too tight and wrong color uniform. Head down for shame or for speed, he pedals home, drops his yellow bike, and runs past the mailbox, over the lawn, as his dad steps off the front porch sipping a Pabst. Now, supposing next, to show how a dog responds not to the meaning of words but to their timbre and pitch, the dad claps twice and calls, crooning in the kindest tone, Here Dimwit, and Come Dumbbell. Once again the dog bounds straight over and sits or jumps up or lies on her back, legs churning away as though speeding through the blue heavens upside down. The dad strokes her belly with his whole palm. But what if, because he would himself feel too stupid to mention how cruel this seems, the boy won't find a single right thing to say, won't try to, won't want to. Instead, idly improving upon the pocket of his mitt with his fist, he stands where he is looking on, stands there, and, removing his cap, then pauses a moment, as the sun, three minutes lower, begins now to make a shadow in the shape of a boy, aged eleven, by a tree, glove on one hand, cap in the other.

Everything

You could say it started when she'd crossed the lawn, so maybe it did. You could say it started as she'd lain in the hammock or noticed the clouds. However it worked it was as if half the too tenanted past appeared, botched trip, ungiven hello, Whooz-it, So-and-So and so on. She closed her eyes. She opened her eyes and examined the spilt tea which beside its quartered lemon sparkled in the mown grass and watered the ground which fed the trees that reached the sky we say is endless and that she, looking up, felt lifted by, felt a part of- it was something like that-this lifted, floating unknowingness. And that's what happened. You could say it started when she'd entered the kitchen or as she'd moved by her husband or when she'd rinsed the blue cup and thought of the moment she lived in. But you could say it started when she'd stood at the window, so maybe it did. Or you could say it started when she'd crossed the lawn or when she'd turned and said, said or thought, What then, referring to everything, is this contraption?

We Regret to Inform

You do it with love, even if you think war is stupid. JANICE MANN SEWING NAME TAGS ON UNIFORMS FOR SOLDIERS HEADED TO THE MIDEAST FROM FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, QUOTED IN NEW YORK TIMES

Padilla, Spooner, Pratt: These three I set to walking with their guns and gear across a bridge and into a town with snipers whom I render blind. No harm can come to Reynolds. Because it's after noon, because I've laid white thread beside a hanging ivy, no harm can come to Overkamp or Silva. For Switzky bombs are harmless. And for Rosenthal and Pierce, Namick and Davis, approaching bullets disappear, and Ingram and Beam walk with invisible shields.

Long ago, before there was anything, there was nothing, except that everyone was always on their way and there would always be a Jardin and Silverio, always a Greenblatt, a Fletcher, and a Beinecke, there would always be a Zachiaris, Uno, and Jaffe, and never not a Framstad, a Morris, or a Thayer. Which is not nothing but something.

If there was nothing first then second came absence and with absence sadness: no Fahnstocks, Gaylords, Doerings, or Sidos, but that would be fixed and finished with.

Often after work I think of them again. Often at night I think of them as boys and nameless, climbing off a tractor, pouring milk, explaining, peeing, sleeping, snaggle-toothed, pudgy and whey-faced, brilliant, knock-kneed, flushed, nervous-laughing, unaccompanied and acned, handsome and peevish. No, nothing can touch my Giesen. No harm can come to Wayfield. This evening the moon rests over the trees ironical and sad and still. I hold my needle in the light for luck. My Glickstien is charmed, my Baya blessed.

I Want the Power to Go Out

The way a kid might she meant making do: canned supper and candles and blankets. She meant the lit sky exploding water in waves. She meant lines down. She meant the power out. Later she said it again but more softly. There was her grandmother and her mother and myself. It was raining. She wore red and green and black paint on each nail. She wore blue shoes. I guessed she thought of my own week's visit over too soon as well as let's please not have an evening with reading and low voices. I think she meant the manic lift fear gives as well as curtains drawn and doors locked and the lot of us safe as socks in a drawer. I guessed she meant the four of us playing jacks in fact, or spades or spoons and laughing and talking louder than ever. I didn't ask.

At the Greyhound Station

This lady'd had her throat removed. Or it wasn't the whole throat, no, but the larynx: a laryngectomy. I guessed she was sixty. Of course, she couldn't speak or, at least, not without this little machine she'd press up under her chin. But she sat there skinny as a blade and smoking and looking around when suddenly- like that-she leaned over and scooped up this five-year-old. Well, the boy lit up top to bottom -completely- and the two of them sat playing creature from space because, of course, that's exactly what this electric thing sounded like, an alien-you'd have to hear it. You speak, I speak, you speak, you speak, I speak and all of us waiting for busses were watching this: myself, the boy's mother, a driver, and a soldier plus a washroom attendant by the lockers. But they sat there, the two of them, the boy on the lady's lap and the lady like a talk-show host back and forth like that until at the right time the lady tied the boy's shoe and touched his shirt and set him down. Then she walked off toward the counters. Now, if anyone moved or looked away for even a moment I don't know but no one said anything.

At Sherman and First

Or, okay, it was something he'd said, and regretted, but better he leave. And so bidden, he did too: stepped outside and stood stupid at the curb, slammed door still sounding. A little rain fell. A bicycle slowed and two girls danced in the yard next door, but in that seamless coincidence of place and event the dancing turned to tag and then a grass fight and back to dancing and it seemed so easy-the bright cries rising, the softening light- it was as if by wishing he'd been kinder he could make it so.

American Golden Eagle Flyer

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ADVERTISEMENT FROM WEEKLY WORLD NEWS

I've run the stonewall behind the mill and on the left, blue paper for a stream with trout. Then the tracks and then the train. Perfect. To the far right I've added a pasture using my own green towel. Out there under the best tree I've placed a couple of horses head to tail. Of five fences three wobble and I could probably send them back but I've propped sheep against two and taped the third until I got them all just right. Or more or less. I've placed the chickens in the pen and the farmer by a cow outside the barn.

What I'm saying is the cow is sick and that the farmer pays that cow special attention. I'm saying this farmer is so worried he takes tiny white pills but because I like things mysterious the cow gets suddenly well. Later, I walk the farmer to his truck and tell him, Go downtown and visit your son, take a break, see a show together, have lunch. As for the geese I've placed five by the pigs, two by the house, one on the porch, and another under.

This works well. I've placed the rabbits with the sheep which might not be precisely right but there's no more fence and it's good enough. I've arranged the daughter and the mother by the stream. Here I'm saying they're talking and that the daughter is terribly angry and has been with reason for years. I'm saying that because it's the most important thing picture one take the other in her arms. Notice the daughter's face and head has a thin, pink ridge up the nose, over the crown and down the neck. You can move it. Careful. I'm saying, in school don't they ask the daughter, Hey, Wendy, too much time on the farm? Sure they do. Of course, the ridge is due to the molding process, something about it, technical matters which don't answer anything. What I'm saying is that why this happens and especially why it's happened to her, no one knows. But ask around.

Express

On the train of your favorite color, steam powered and hand fit and welded for you, you sit back. For a ride more suited to you you couldn't wish. Out your window the air is a soft midwestern blue, and in the distance, from his field, a farmer waves. What isn't your way? In a few miles, thinking of you, thinking only of your happiness, your conductor stops the train. Close by you find yourself a shaded spot and a porter brings your robe and a chair to match the one at home. Your feet are bathed, hair groomed, and soon because the weather is so nearly perfect and because you've raised your eyes in just that way your lunch is served: a picnic of seafood and ices and delicate cakes. Later, but only when you're ready, your train rocks gently forward and you board again. Even the light across your arm and hands seems intended for you. Notice these homes and that bakery, the cops at the corner, the girl with the parcel at the five-and-ten. You see these trees, these elms with each leaf moving to please you or console? It's simple. There is nothing without you.

US Exhaust and Tire

After a long day stacking tailpipe in rows he arrives home and lies down on the sofa placing his feet, shoes off, on his hard hat and jacket. In the distance five identical smokestacks spew five identical white plumes and if you were in that room just left of the phone you'd see that due to the light and cool breeze each plume turns quickly into an endless gold streak aimed at the neighboring town. US Exhaust and Tire-it's where he works. He turns the TV on. In a minute, hearing noises behind him, he starts and sits up to see his daughter in western pajamas, boots, and blue spurs. As his wife supports her by the shoulders the girl sits astride their black Labrador mix. Dad, she says, Bang, and she waves two red plastic six guns in every direction, then falls off sending one gun under the sofa, smashing the other. Her father jumps up, her mother bends down, and the little girl begins to laugh and he is, in this moment, as glad to be where he is as he has ever been. The girl crawls after the gun and turns and peeps out behind the sofa, plugging her father one last time. He grabs his belly and groans, slumps forward beside her. What wouldn't he do? He'd take a bullet or burn, jump under a train.

Name it. Got me, he says, ugh. Years later the same man arrives home after a long day packing staples and pens. Stemp's Office Supply-he can't complain. He turns the TV on, walks to the kitchen for a shot and no more, a little ice. Possibly tonight he'll open the Pecan Sandies, finish the Triscuits. How much has happened though, South Street divided and widened, his ex-wife moved and remarried. He naps. And then the landlord calls. Two cars pass.

Out the window it's a view like one he remembers: five smokestacks, identical light, similar plumes aimed eastward to Lincoln. And how would he not think of his old life, his pretty daughter, fine, good wife? And what does he say? In the same room not five feet away, you wouldn't hear a thing.

Gum

I've boarded the southbound bus by Walgreen's when I spot a magazine jammed into the seat so I pry it out and there's a three-page spread on heaven with a full-color photo of Michelangelo's Last Judgment in which to the left your martyrs and saints swirl upward past the risen Jesus while to the right there's a distinctly downward trend: moneylenders, thieves, and fiends head straight to the flames.

Is that how it works? I'm reading along when three young, largish, and loud-talking women get on at the corner, and I'm basically minding my own business when the one with the lip rings slides in by an opened window three rows up and her friend, the biggest and blondest, parks beside her and, blowing a perfect, purple bubble, props her knees.

Hey, she says, So I'm out on parole and I meet this guy, Jimmy, and he's out on parole so Jimmy goes, Let's party, so like okay, fine, so pretty soon were like over to my house and the next morning he's like I thought we was in love, and I'm like, Whatever, and he's like, As if.

As if, I love that, and I love that post-hipster use of "like" because it shows, or they both show, how approximate and multi-meaninged the world mostly seems, which is exactly what I'm thinking when with a glance like a slap I'm caught watching by the third lady, the one in the wobbly heels who teeters slowly down the aisle and leans over to see what I'm reading and, placing a hand on my arm and pausing, straightens and stands there. People, she says, God, she says, Honestly, Sweetheart, Mister, What will be the end?

In Line at the Kwik Trip

The Millionaire was a popular TV show in the mid-fifties

Whenever that fabulous John Beresford Tipton summoned his servant Michael Anthony, Presto: there was smiling Mike in his dark suit awaiting instructions. I loved that show. Mike, he'd say in his raspy, bestowing voice, Mike, our next millionaire, and then he'd slowly reach over and hand Mike that fat check and Mike was off to find Citizen So-and-So who was always in a jam with his bookie or his rent or his woman, and while the money might help life's big lessons lay with the heart, which was mostly the theme each week. But I'm in line at the Kwik Trip thinking of John Beresford Tipton when I notice two women hanging a bright banner of wash behind the parking lot, little dress, big pants, shirt, shirt, shirt, and double sheet, and because their lives can't be easy or because it's sunny outside, because it's cool for a change, because I'm off work for a week I wish each woman a million and for a moment the whole scene brightens, a wheezing diesel pulls up to the sparkling pumps, the scuttling black cat finds a perch on the propane cage, but mostly it's the women I've wished rich, the first who, arrested in thought, now stops and crosses her arms to confer with her friend who steps sideways past the pants, past a shirt, and leans forward to listen.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Falling Brick Kills Local Manby Mark Kraushaar Copyright © 2009 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Wisconsin Press
• Date d'édition: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0299230848
• ISBN 13: 9780299230845
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 83
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: GPSR Kontakt; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne