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    Strange Light
    Strange Light
    Strange Light
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Strange Light

    By Derrick Brown

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Derrick Brown's fourth and final collection of poetry and short stories is a unrelenting machine of honesty that has been called his finest collection of new work. Strange Light takes us back to the docks, to a violent drama class and boring prom, an undersea conversation with Jacques Cousteau, and into his famous romantic bursts of verse. The epic poem, Strange Light, anchors this collection as one of the most inventive and potent collections of modern American poetry. About.com called his 2009 collection Scandalabra, one of the best books of the year. Everything hilarious and stirring is illuminated. The power of Strange Light is waiting.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateSep 14, 2011
    ISBN9781935904762
    Strange Light
    Author

    Derrick Brown

    DERRICK c. BROWN is the winner of the 2013 Texas Book of The Year award for Poetry. He is a former paratrooper for the 82nd airborne and is the president of one of what Forbes and Filter Magazine call "...one of the best independent presses in the country", Write Bloody Publishing. He is the author of four books of poetry

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    Reviews for Strange Light

    3.5/5

    6 ratings1 review

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    • 2/5
      Derrick Brown will always have a special place in my journey with poetry.

      I found his writing at a pivotal time in my mid-twenties. He performed at Cafe Deux Soleil in 2009 - to this day, he is still the funniest poet I've ever seen. He used music from Sigur Rós and Explosions in the Sky to back-up his readings, a technique I adopted heavily for my own performances later on. He swung for the fences with every poem - the metaphors were dizzying, the puns so bad they were good and the writing was nakedly honest. Brown also didn't sound like any other slam-poets I'd seen. Every other person who got on stage that night delivered their work with the same cadence and rhythm (if you've been to a slam event in the past, you know what I'm talking about).

      My brother picked this book up for me recently and I read it in a few sittings. Two-stars feels cold, but I genuinely thought it was just "okay."

      Derrick Brown's written voice comes off tired in this book...the metaphors don't hold the same grandeur as his earlier work. I'm also at a different place in life - a little older, a little wiser(?) and I've experienced a mix of good and bad things over the last eight years that have coloured how I see the world. Brown's words feel like they've been picked over in his notebooks - trying to recapture the magic of his early work. Many of the poems feel forced to me, rather than found.

      A worthwhile read if you're a fan, but I wouldn't start with this book if you haven't read or seen him before.

    Book preview

    Strange Light - Derrick Brown

    Strange Light

    poems and stories

    by Derrick C. Brown

    Write Bloody Publishing

    America’s Independent Press

    Long Beach, CA

    writebloody.com

    Copyright © Derrick C. Brown 2011

    No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the author, if living, except for critical articles or reviews.

    Brown, Derrick C.

    1st edition.

    ISBN: 978-1-935904-76-2

    Interior Layout by Lea C. Deschenes

    Cover Designed by Nik Ewing

    Photos by Mike McGee

    Proofread by Jennifer Roach

    Edited by Tara Hardy, Courtney Olsen, Mindy Nettifee, Amber Tamblyn,

    Loulu Losorelli, and Adrian Wyatt

    Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

    Special thanks to Lightning Bolt Donor, Weston Renoud

    Printed in Tennessee, USA

    Write Bloody Publishing

    Long Beach, CA

    Support Independent Presses

    writebloody.com

    To contact the author, send an email to writebloody@gmail.com

    Note from the Author

    The themes in this book: Light, belts, reverse engineering, peaches, darkness, apologies, flowers, fury, oceanic loneliness, the word scuttle and sudden endings are purposeful and are a result of the author being in a good place. His kind. You can do this.

    —DCB

    for Paratroopers, Sailors, Motorcyclists

    and people who kiss with their all on the first date.

    Strange Light

    (Strangle Light)

    Lovers Fizz

    Remind me of Spain.

    Let the propane

    light from the barbecue

    glow the back of your hair into

    silhouette.

    Set.

    Put bicycle grease on your bedsprings.

    Let no one hear your love.

    Subtle your lust. Lash it to your spine and walk funny.

    Stand in front of the mirror with a camera

    waiting for the love of your life to show up.

    Drive to me.

    Scuttle your plans.

    Drive with the radio off.

    Drive like a Trucker that’s been face-punched.

    Peel your car out and shoot gravel back into the sky.

    Don’t be Amsterdam, be Holland.

    I’ve never been to Spain. I’m asking you to remind me of it.

    Don’t just be tits, be all the tits, be wanted.

    Don’t puss out on love.

    Put some ice cream in the dead man’s float.

    You’re either someone’s dinner or you’re someone’s genius,

    either way doesn’t matter as long as you’re zizzing delicious.

    Allow me to be an ocean, allow me to freeze.

    I’m saying I can hold you up, 

    even the waves retreat to make room for new ones.

    I need you to forget all endings that demand paradise.

    Your terror moves me. Your failures have whittled you fine.

    Scream into the road map until your lungs are transmission hot:

    Dear Lord, is that all you got?

    Some giant in the sky pushes

    the head of night down

    into the sea

    and a crown of stars bubbles

    on up. Fizzle that way.

    Ringlets

    Young prom ladies in loud dresses and ringlets

    mingle outside the restaurant in oversized

    men’s suit jackets, their dates, smile-smoking,

    shivering, pretending not to shiver. The thing

    you said was dead is not dead. No virgin deserves

    a cigarette. We should head to the emergency room

    and just pop our heads in and say hello. Tell them we

    are alright so they don’t think we only visit when

    things are bad. We are breathing without tubes today.

    They don’t make pills yet for this feeling. It’s like finding fruit

    in the snow. I want to call down cocktails and black tire

    jacks from the heavens. I want to break into something.

    That kind of good. Your eyes are the kind we have all been waiting for.

    When I hear a single note sustain in a room

    with bad lighting, I think of us.

    Both of our bodies,

    shivering.

    Our Long Low Nights

    1.

    Sometimes when a jazz cymbal

    is played with a brush—

    a steady soft roll—

    I hear those rainy streets,

    the cars I shoved you against,

    kissing you into place.

    I can hear them coming for us,

    rolling across the wet asphalt.

    Our shirts as skin, soaked tight.

    We both hate poems that mention jazz,

    which is okay, because jazz hates us.

    We kiss like jazz hates us.

    2.

    You’re not scared of living,

    you’re not scared of love,

    you’re not scared of money, sex or the truth,

    but there’s never enough.

    3.

    You said life is as short and confusing as a small, angry dog.

    It can tell when you’re afraid of it. If you open your hand towards it

    and it snaps for blood

    it is correct to punch it hard in the neck.

    4.

    Walk to the grocery store and play Find the worst shampoo smell.

    Find the least sexiest peanut butter.

    "Find the in store announcement microphone

    and see who can quote hip-hop lyrics the longest

    using manager voice."

    Buy a month’s worth of paper plates.

    Try to not let grief be as easy as pajamas all day.

    5.

    In the cupboard I find corn silk powder.

    When I am bored, I sprinkle some out on the floor and Bing Crosby in my socks.

    It makes me miss the skin on the insides of your legs.

    6.

    You found a sledgehammer in the garage.

    Someone with a sledgehammer loves me.

    I rejoiced like Berlin.

    We invented a game called Find Two Things to Smash.

    We played it every night. Whoever found the most "I should’ve smashed that a

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