Dana L. Brown's blog

JAGERSFONTEIN JAUNT

Dana L. Brown — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:27:31 -0500

The Boers, or farmers, the white South African Afrikaners of Dutch origin, are not known for their embrace of exotic food traditions or use of spices. They pride themselves on their carnivorous capacity, and their favorite mode of cooking is grilling, orbraai, as it is called in Afrikaans. ...

Journal Excerpt

Dana L. Brown — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:42:31 -0500

In the first hours and days following the big Sunday blowout with Jamaica, three weeks ago, both she and I had made overtures of peace. Very late that Sunday night she'd reached across the de-militarized zone of the mattress and touched my hip. The next night I'd offered an almost-complete...

Blue moon

Dana L. Brown — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:44:19 -0500

I'm sick of the night
deep as a lagoon,
its plum waters
mad with larvae,
and the blue egrets
picking, picking,
as their bills
garble moonlight
to fine flint;

dog-tired of the spring days
thick as hops,
when seedpods lie wet
in their golden hulls,
and the streetlamps at...

NOVEMBER 20

Dana L. Brown — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:33:06 -0500

American lion, leon,
get your meat on.a myth of the mindle independent paw:Mary wore your ear tuff on a beaded neckletfor Mardi gras.
Great cat god of the cliffand arroyo, and common swift bound over limestone Vault a lichen bluffResurrect...

Be Good and You Will Be Lonely

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:37:41 -0500

The large express bus pulled into the square, and Justine was one of the first to alight. She wore a blue raincoat (with turned-up collar and belt pulled tight) that gave her a young, sporty look. Yes, she looked good in it. She surveyed the square, took a few steps forward to check...

Meredith

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:21:21 -0500

Love

Like when skateboards kiss the air

Love

Arugula salad, a steak and pear

Love

The diffracted light of your iris

Love

New sights,...

Wino Supremo: Newman

Dana L. Brown — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:11:33 -0400

I found myself bumping along beside Newman in his truck, who alternately cursed and laughed, talking a mile a minute about everything from the weather to what mischief the local wine functionaries had gotten up to recently.

"Fat bastards. They ain't...

The Island

Dana L. Brown — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:06:18 -0400

There must be something like intuition in a first-rate scientist's mind, some lightning flare to uncover what has been there all along. Rigorous, meticulous, one must be, but so must the great poet.

When I finally brought myself to say all this to her, I also said that there were those that would...

Fawn

Dana L. Brown — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:06:05 -0400

Sippin' a cognac
Riffing a folk track
Howlin' Wolf
Recorded by Alan Lomax

Drop flamingo beats
And climb retarded heights
These outdoorsy freaks
Even Carry kites

Make a woman laugh
Around a fire pit
They call it romance
I call it tiger shit

Wearing dickies
And no lacoste
Blue collar hickies

Lunch Topic

Dana L. Brown — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:12:36 -0400

Danielle was seated at the patio in front of Osha, across from the oldest of her agency colleagues, the refined lady with her gucci-laden fingers.

At her side was the new colleague, Larry. He took a bite of shawarma and went on talking:

"Well, our century has made one enormous...

Chasers

Dana L. Brown — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:19:04 -0400

Picture it: he's in Napa, it's May, his feet are kicked up in the loft of a great romantic barn. He looks at the rust and red paint and a wheelbarrow. Vines of grapes span the valley basin and grazing sheep make themselves heard by the tinkling of their little bells.

Holler at the babe

Dana L. Brown — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:46:35 -0400

I call her my whirling dervish:
sweet scented, manic, fervent

Queen of bedside tantrums
Shouts the force of thunderous canons

Stands out like a neon ice plant
invasive, bright, like new implants

a flaunt of hips, orange bangs, and nice tan
She like Nelson, Haggard, and Van Zandt

Sort of got a mind...

It's Over Boy

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:54:56 -0400

It had been three weeks since he had last seen her, and about five years since he had come to know her. He had had prettier girlfriends, but this one possessed fine qualities: she was barely twenty when they had met; she had an amusing spontaneity and was...

Simple Syrup

Dana L. Brown — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:57:19 -0400

The way you pour simple syrup:
super dupa fly -
you enchant simple tasks,
an impasse way too fly.

It's that passive thang,
that thang you can't explain
Like why that kid
For some reason got so much game.

You wear a green lid cap:
Twisted forty-degrees in back,
that's Oakland A's on the stitch,
fix...

You No Worry Larry

Dana L. Brown — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:55:53 -0400

Day.

He was in Jamaica visiting that crazy girl with the 20-second hugs and vocal welcome. This is Tessa, a friend for whom you bring your A-game. She has quite the boisterous temperament you see - a real party animal – he just hopes she’ll be generous, and dust some of that shine on him....

Vultures in Thermals

Dana L. Brown — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:08:03 -0400

Rafts of air rise up rock faces
raptors ride and glide the soft stasis.
A carcass lies in the silence of the depth
It was a good day to die on the ruminant's last breath.
Cause the mustard's in bloom in a tawny long patch
There's a crescent of moon and the ruins of ash.
The vultures swerve, soar, and sail...

Ten Indispensable Items

Dana L. Brown — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:34:00 -0400

1. Musician: Neko Case

Neko's voice soars. It sweeps you up with southern gothic talons, lifting you to a view of the world that is beautiful and tragic. Neko writes songs about the overwhelming force of nature. And she is a very down to earth gal, insatiably curious, with a sense of humor and a deep...

On Beauty

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:41:41 -0500

Some say beauty is use, and others say energy is beauty. In either case beauty appears as a side product of activity: a static expression of kinetic potential, usually characterized by high gloss and smooth rounded forms. The ancients tried to bring the concept of beauty mathematically into line...

New Love

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:44:51 -0500

Somewhere in between a subwoofer and palpable quiet there lies details, innumerable fine, delicate details. All of life's chance mutations, there, in full view: a hawk's aerie high in a tree, the old man at the market with the best fruit. He and she knew of these secrets, they held them close,...

How To Be Good

Dana L. Brown — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:02:11 -0500

Wake up and smell the kettle. Go play Van Morrison gospel. Go jog. Go pass them folks doing the tai chi and yawn. Stretch out on that lawn. Reflect. Feel the sun beam on your forearm, sip some water, click the tongue. Reconstruct the past night, try to, try your best... You were feeling empathetic,...

The Athlete

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:28:53 -0500

Here's a theory. Top athletes are compelling because they embody the comparison based achievement we American's revere - fast-est, strong-est, and because they do so in a totally unambiguous way.

Questions of the best plumber or best managerial accountant are impossible even to define, whereas the...

Two Greats

Dana L. Brown — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:58:50 -0500

He was the young romantic.

He was the true romantic. He played ballads the way nobody else could play them.

They weren't sentimentalized, they were beautiful and they were deep. They didn't require a lot of hand-wringing. And they were different from anybody else. You'd have these almost...

A Year in Africa

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:21:58 -0500

He wakes up late, too late for his eight o'clock lecture. It is not the first lecture he has missed since Lydia entered his life. He is falling behind in his studies and does not see how he will ever catch up. In his first two years at university he had been one of the stars of the class. He found...

I Stand For Barack Obama

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:20:22 -0500

Dear History,

I beat you. I stand a generator of generations bearing witness to a world that we are holding accountable for past actions. Me and my friends, we're changing our diets, re-inventing marriage, check-mating capitalism,...

Wine, Art & Subsequent Cursory Investigation

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:19:15 -0500

I like my wine chambré, yeah, chambré bitch.

And that's how I got it one evening at the Weinstein Gallery.

Dangling off a cable car to get there, I pass Union Square, zip my coat up and draw in the scent of a woman close or near. I am feeling good, lithe, libertine, smacking on Trident....

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 08

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:16:38 -0500

Man, what a hell of a weekend that was. Intimate contact with close friends who by virtue of geography, unfortunately don't spend enough time together. Glad that it happened. It was bound to, if anything. We sang. We drank. We ambled path to path under Speedway pines. A few of us meandered into darkness,...

Notes on a Frenchman

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:15:23 -0500

So what if you tout yourself green just to make bank? So what if integrity is now a synonym for frivolity? So what if we are a culturally kool, hipster-cum-indifferent ensemble of spokespersons and shop-freaks? And what if nearly every technical gadget is hyphenated with the letter i?

So What if Miles...

Untimely Death

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:14:01 -0500

At my bedside table
leafing
at a book
and cradling a Carlsberg.
The saturnine gloom that's my face
reflects the news:
David Foster Wallace hung himself.
He was 46.
He was a fucking genius.
I can't not help think of his wife.
I want to hold her,
call Sean and arrange a vigil for Her,
fetch for...

Wednesday

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:12:12 -0500

At times I feel as if I'm part of some great whole

like a leaf on a bough

It gives me great comfort

I seem to hear the sap running up the trunk

The tree will rustle and sway

and I'll sway with it and not be afraid

I know the roots are deep and strong.

If you're torn away, the wind will carry...

On Water

Dana L. Brown — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:10:29 -0500

Of all sounds, water, the original life element, has the most splendid symbolism. Rain, a stream, a fountain, a river, a waterfall, the sea, each makes its unique sound but all share a rich symbolism. They speak of cleansing, of purification, of refreshment and renewal.

The sea has always been one...