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Woodland Pattern™    Book   Center Poetry Archive		Mark Kraushaar Mark Kraushaar is from Lake Mills, Wisconsin. His book, The Uncertainty Principle, won the 2010 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize from Waywiser Press. A previous collection, Falling Brick Kills Local Man, was a finalist for the May Swenson Award, the Juniper Prize, and the Walt Whitman Award, and was published in 2009 by the University of Wisconsin Press as winner of the Felix Pollak Prize. His work has appeared in the Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Alaska Review, Gettysburg Review, as well as Best American Poetry, and on the website Poetry Daily. Another Mark Kraushaar link.

What The Dead Know Mark Kraushaar

They know to keep quiet. But they would tell you don't worry. They would tell you there's sloping gentle fields and a marvelous light. They'd whisper, Mister, take it easy, they would signal Madam, buy a hat. They would tell you start again, rent a room, move forward, breathe a little, read a little, take a walk, watch your step. They would tell you God wears plaid pants, six-eyelet oxfords, and a wrist watch, Helbros, gold. They would tell you God's a girl in third grade knotting Her shoe. They would tell you God's a man with cracked glasses mowing His yard, or He lives with Lilly, His wife, and a son named Sal. They would tell you He works in auto body repair and plays the guitar. They would tell you He's thought up Himself, that He thinks up botany and basketball, eczema, mustard, and mayhem. They would tell you He makes up the malls and the back-alleys, the droplets, and the tiny specks and spores, and the long, loud parties that reach deep into the morning and mean for someone a meeting, for someone a mating and for someone a crashed yellow Chevy and a trip to the joint. They would say He makes up the frowsy freeways and the dirty everyday, or that regarding a white cloud in the shape of a thumbless glove, He thinks up breakfast with bacon that sizzles and curls on itself like a lie though He may never speak of this even to Himself. What do the dead know? They've signed on to keep quiet, but if they could tell you they would, and if they could they would comfort you. They'd tell you, Go on and be happy, try it. You would.

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