top of page
NEIGHBORHOOD OF GRAY HOUSES

NEIGHBORHOOD OF GRAY HOUSES

$18.00Price

ISBN: 978-1-7333400-0-7

Pub Date: Mar. 2020

Pages: 90


By Derek Annis


The poems in Derek Annis’ debut collection, Neighborhood of Gray Houses, wander through a landscape darkened by childhood abandonment and loss, before coming to rest in a home illuminated by new life and cautious optimism. The speaker comes to consciousness at a time when parental contracts have been breached, in a world falling apart, and as it falls apart, the poems become increasingly surreal, increasingly sure of the world’s uncertainty. Ultimately, the birth of the speaker’s daughters provides direction, a way out of the neighborhood of gray houses, to a place with more solid footing.

    Neighborhood of Gray Houses, a debut collection by Derek Annis, is a bitter, joyful, wise addition to the literary conversation. The poems, even those that border on the surreal, have a direct toughness that seems to slow down the moment each poem inhabits, regardless of its dimensions, and make the reader listen to this strong and original new voice. I can confidently predict that none of those who listen will be sorry for having done it.

    —Christopher Howell


    Derek Annis writes in the voice of an intimate stranger in these brilliantly fractured lyrics. Narrative and associative and wild, these poems end far from where they start, but are shaped with precision, as if constructed out of glass that’s been passed through a fire. In the Neighborhood of Gray Houses, nothing is untouched by grief and by beauty, and “. . . the children / bury rosebuds / under heaps of trash” while “a wolf howls back / to an ambulance.” This is a brilliant collection of poems, and a tour through a neighborhood full of unforgettable terrors and miracles.

    —Laura Kasischke


    Derek Annis lives in Spokane, Washington, and holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University. He is an editor and social media manager for Lynx House Press, and has been a reader and editor for Willow Springs Magazine. His poems have appeared in Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Missouri Review Online, Spillway, Third Coast, and many other journals.

    bottom of page