Scandalabra

Title Page

Scandalabra

a collection of poetry

†

by Derrick Brown

Write Bloody Publishing

America’s Independent Press

Long Beach, CA

writebloody.com

Copyright Information

Copyright © Derrick Brown 2010

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.

1st digital edition.

ISBN: 978-1-935904-92-2

E-book Layout by Lea C. Deschenes

Cover Designed by Josh Grieve

Concept by Matt Maust

Chapter Headings by shea M. gauer

Photo, Front, Bio and Back by Matt Wignall

Proofread by Jennifer Roach

Edited by Michael Sarnowski, Saadia Byram

Additional Review by Mindy Nettifee, Amber Tamblyn, Cristin O’keefe Aptowicz, Stephen Latty

Marketing by Todd Valentine

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

Dedication

For Andy Buell,

No one I know loves these poems so much that they are willing to get arrested for putting them on police cars. Thank you and sorry about the community service.

A Message from the Author

When an author completes a book, there is a weight that is lifted. These poems were the dumbbells I had been carrying around for the last four years. When this book was completed, especially a book as thick and wiley as this one, I felt like this may be it. There is always a bug that stings you and it poisons you back into poetry, but I know it won’t migrate here for years.

This book was exhausting, especially for the themes I had to suss out. For that reason, I knew I wanted to do one large volume instead of doing a second volume released later in the year. I wanted all the burdens and memories of these stories and poems to be purged so I could feel like a semi-clean slate. I found that I was hungry to break new ground with persona pieces, more prose, silly pieces, gut suckers, heavy romance, the infamous list poem, the thank you poem and the dark sludge pieces. I realized that I used to caution myself during the editing process: What is Mother going to think? What are fans of the last book going to enjoy, if any? These pieces are the product of writing with no filter and my attempt at somewhat honest searching through the ugliest, absolute darkest and brightest spots in my life.

They were first born in a tiny studio apartment on seventh and pine in Long Beach California in 2004. (Paranormal Television, The Healer, Dick Richards) A large body of the poems were then written in Spring Hill and Nashville Tennessee, (Shelby Bottoms, Nashville: A list of Bullet Holes, A Sounder of Boars, The Secret Forest Dynasty) in a small house with a creek lined field where I spent most of my days shooting a bow and arrow, drinking beer and staying in the great laziness of love. I am in love with that town, but the failure of that relationship was the heaviest wreck. I tried to write my way through it and it wasn’t working.

Months later my dream of living on a boat again led me back to California where a motorcycle poetry road trip with author Amber Tamblyn and the world’s greatest photographer, Matt Wignall, lifted my spirits out of the gravel. (Cross Country Motorcycle Frenzy, The Long Saltation Into Wide Open Air)

The last twenty poems for this collection (Project Known as X-ray, When Your Friends Leave You, Diving School, The Return of Christ) were written on the Pacific Ocean, on a ship I live on called The Sea Section. Environment does shape your work. I am blessed to have been in these gorgeous environments long enough to have had a match struck in my ribs, to pour out these new pieces of exploration and raw observation or raw-bservation. Yes, that’s a goofy pun and I am not afraid to use it. I am glad and lucky to be alive to sling another volume of work into your hands. I owe everything to the people who tell other people about these books. Thank you to the max. Enjoy.

-Derrick Brown

Romanza, Crooked

Cotton In The Air

Your polished back is arched like Saint Louis.

I can see your fingers pushing into the bricks

when I lift your hair

to smell October drain from your neck.

You are cotton caught in the air

I am unfurling laces in your body.

I move on you steady like a fleet of ships pushing ice.

I want to break it all.

Your tank top strap slips down the huh huh of your shoulder

and I will not strain meaning from this.

I have to taste all of your shapes with my teeth,

circles of salt

square butter.

Waltzing a wrecking ball.

I lift your body so that your legs strap to my hips and you are now adorned.

I toss you around the room because I don’t want to be inside;

I want to walk through you.

So I can know.

I am wading in the dark felt Tijuana paintings of your hair.

I am molting my bed clothes uncoiling towards Sahara.

All I want to do is hot lust you into dead sweat.

To watch your legs, those bent sickles,

to watch them shake

like poisoned wrens.

I am gnashed and dazzled.

Smother me in the exhausted thrust of your yes. . . .

wet

as exploding laundromats.

You will be rough-balanced and throne-sucked and tongue-dozed hard.

A straggler you can’t shake from your open-air lava solo.

May I be the image you turn to

when you are heaving alone,

burning like Halloween in Detroit?

I am breathing up your legssssspitting at the hiding nightingale.

Drift your breasts into my mouth

and I will be that doped up, spinning victrola.

La la la la la la.

I want to make love to you while you’re wearing figure skates

until the hardwood floors are toothpicks.

I want to kiss your throat in a dressing room with my hands

bound around your voice.

I want you to leave your boots on in your apartment

so we march our bodies across the ceiling

and confuse the neighbors.

I don’t care if you made that dress,

I will shred it until you look deserted.

You’re as restless as a New Orleans graveyard in a storm

with the coffins boiling up to the surface.

That’s all this writing is. You are across from me and the soup is cooking.

I sit up all night listening to your dental records.

I will teach you of exorcism and screw the hell out of you.

I will carry your steam in my mouth.

Daydreaming of the evening of loud struggle.

Call my name—I will cascade like a suicide.

I will fall upon you like a box of fluorescent bulbs

dropped from a five-story building.

I will do anything you ask. . . .

unless I have been drinking; then it is opposite day.

I can’t believe you can sleep through all this.

Chunks of brick in your fingernails.

Mortar on your pillow

A bomb shelter

sketched on your skirt.

Safe.

Patience

I can not love you until you can love our beautiful waitress

in the simple way that I do.

Collide Escape

Whatever you dropped in the dark

can be recovered in the morning.

We will find the turquoise ring

that clutched the mud and grass

as I ripped your costly jeans,

down to your soft calves.

The night rain, beading upon your skinny spine.

If you were drunk, I didn’t know.

You didn’t say anything stupid.

Your tongue was blossoming,

pronouncing your kiss, cleanly.

I was glad your breath was hot enough

to melt the night resin off of me.

I read my hands down your simple gospel

and I no longer need 34th Street miracles.

Are you sure you want this mess?

I am a submarine

full of gasoline

and you’re waterproof matches.

I am suspended in the cinema of that moment

next to the house

collapsing in the dirt

where I needed you.

Fathoms under fathoms,

that’s how heavy I laid upon you.

What are you to me?

You are more than on my side,

you are the weapon on my side.

Safety off.

Rest under the shadow of my gut.

Unsentimental kissing.

A gushing reveille for strangers becoming victorious.

Walk through the valley of the 5 o’clock shadow.

Pyrokinetic honeysuckle, let’s boycott the hocus pocus

and get straight to the secret. . . .

Are you the one snarling in the family photo?

Are you the one crackling voltage in the yearbook?

Then you are the pearl I steal.

Your eyes, a kaleidoscope of collide and escape.

Navigate to me by the map of fallen stars.

Love rises back to you

like an escalator fragrance.

The Best Pick Up Line Is Howling

The best thing to say to an unknown woman when leaving a place is

You and I are going to kiss someday.

I used to say You don’t know me. So, when are we gonna make out?

Some girls would take a long time, hemming and hawing,

thinking about what they had planned Thursday,

a year from not now.

The only response to

You and I are going to kiss someday.

is

Okay or No, thank you.

When this happens, you