Book number three in the Rock River Literary series is now available from Zombie Logic Press, and it is The Blood Dark Sea by Outlaw Poet Dennis Gulling. Dennis Gulling is a small press veteran who edited Crawlspace from 1980-1989, read with Outlaw Poetry founder Todd Moore on their “World Tour,” and is so elusive he could be standing next to you right now and you wouldn’t even know it. But all that's about to change, as Zombie Logic Press, a poetry publisher based in Rockford, has published Gulling's first full-length collection of poetry, The Blood Dark Sea. A student of, and later protege of Todd Moore, a long-time Belvidere English teacher credited with establishing the Outlaw Poetry movement, Gulling is an unassuming figure you might see at poetry readings, concerts, plays, and any sort of cultural event going on in Rockford and never recognize him. That's the way he likes it. But that quiet, unassuming veneer is belied by the bombastic nature of the 100 pages of poems in The Blood Dark Sea.
In The Blood Dark Sea we have one hundred stories of small timers finding themselves in bad places at the wrong time, but entertainingly so. Their misfortune is definitely the reader's gain, as the German concept of schadenfreude is raised to an art form by this poet and his keen observation and detailing of the worst moment's in other peoples' lives. But it's not simply prurient gaping at lowlife and bad decisions, there are no judgments here.Gulling delivers his poems like short, unexpected bursts of gunfire in an idyllic suburban afternoon. There is truth in the lives of these people. A truth that is ever bit as honest as the corrupt lives of bankers, movie stars, and politicians, but what these people do not enjoy is the safety net of knowing their actions will be condoned, forgiven, or expunged from the record by a team of lawyers. They must accept swift and brutal justice without flinching or making excuses. And in an almost noble way, they do.
THE END
She drove all night
At nothing
But thinking there
Must be someone there
Felt the weight
Of all that gas station money
In her pockets
And the sharp sting
Where a bullet
Grazed her neck
Gulls cried above her head
As she held her hand
Against the setting sun
Her knees buckled
Into the sand
Cold blue water
Washing all around her
And she laughed softly
Knowing her life
Could never get any better than this
BURNING
He came to
With the car on fire
She stood outside laughing
Waving a gas can over her head
He blistered both hands
Getting the door open
Hit the ground
With everything burning
Too busy trying
To stamp out the flames
To notice the bullet
She put in his ass
SHE DROVE
She drove around all night
With his headless corpse
In the seat beside her
The head in a grocery bag
On his lap
Every now and then
She’d pull off the road
Take the head out of the bag
And remind him again
Just why he was being punished
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