Contested Terrain

by D.A. Gray

CONTESTED TERRAIN captures the myriad identities inside a veteran shaped by birth, geography and, later, a set of experiences that belie any hand-me-down wisdom. "Cave Country" sees the green, fertile surface give way as the illusion collapses beneath the speaker's feet; in "Desert Skies," a barrage of war images hit faster than the speaker can process them; and "Returning to the Hill Country" shows the altered landscape, both physical and mental, that awaits his return. The final section, "A Handful of Dust" shifts from the individual to the culture of fear that has become a new, uncomfortable normal. Gray's speakers still believe that beauty exists-often in an uneasy coexistence with tension, hypervigilance, and an ever-changing consciousness.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2017

Reviews

[FutureCycle Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are the publisher, so all of our authors get five stars from us. Excerpts:


DOMESTIC DOGS RUNNING LOOSE

No one seems to understand what dogs
at night are chasing, if the night itself
will turn these dogs to something wild
with longer teeth, a keener smell.

Four sets of amber eyes peer out from a copse
of cedar trees betrayed by headlight beams.
A driver turning on an ess-shaped curve
ignores the sight his headlights catch, sweeping

through a neighbor’s field, exposing them.
A fool ignores these wild domestics, thinking a collar
a sign of domesticity. “Lock your fence,
and keep ’em fed, your dogs won’t run.”

But there’s the corpse of a calf now rotting
on the furthest hill, a chicken found outside
its coop, a smaller dog—a neighbor’s terrier
that bolted one night, long after dinner

scraps were scraped. It ran through the yard
into the woods and never was seen again.
These bodies lay uneaten, an urge
that’s deeper than reason.
Driving to Fort Hood,
a night without sleep has left me red-eyed awake.
My mind is running across fencerows. I drive
on autopilot where a formation of troops waits,
where, still, it is dark. Without thinking, I count

soldiers who stand waiting for the clock to strike
at six, for the cannon fire. There’s forty here,
which means for now that no one has been arrested
for answering the call of a human wild, where clubs

sell booze to minors sporting fresh tattoos
they purchased with a payday loan. And all
of them, for one night, avoided fighting
the enemy outside the gates.
It would be easy
to claim some speech I said still lingered in
their minds. But traveling the darkest fields where roads
and headlights never reach, the message seems
to take a twisting path that reason can’t.


ASYMPTOTE

It’s when we lie awake at night
the darkness rises almost to our skin
and, if we’re still, we quiet the fictive
beasts of our anxieties, feel it sprawl,
and now it’s not so wild. The night has taken
nearly human form; and we, so spent
from worry, push against the room,
find nothing pushing back—a thought
that comforts us. With that, the beastly
sounds begin to vanish. We roll
over, cool, and let the night cover us;
the moon and stars almost touch our skin.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book after listening to an excellent presentation by D.A. Gray at the Poetry Society of Texas Summer Conference. Many of these poems are quietly powerful. They do not punch you in the gut but settle into the psyche. The prompting of a cascade of thoughts is one basis of poetry and Gray is an education in himself.

Many of the poems are thoughts or reflections of Gray as a former soldier. If you have been in combat, you may discover deeper levels to his words but you do not have to be a veteran to appreciate this work. Likewise, these poems may strike you at a visceral level. You need not be an academic to appreciate the craft of sestina or villanelle.

I have not read enough contemporary poetry. It's been over thirty years since I got my masters in poetry and I am still concentrating on the 20th century. Gray's is a potent voice to discover in this new millennium.

[Courtney Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many dog-eared pages, so many lines underlined. His childhood poems, such as "Chicken Tree" and "Lime," took me back to mine (I grew up in the country, t00). Then, he took me to war. Gray shares the experiences of the soldier, the nurse, and the veteran grappling with memories, pain, and how to return "normal" life, whatever that is. He brought me back again to live in a neighborhood not unlike my own and contemplates the contradictions that exist within himself and all of us; the struggle between what we think and trying to be aware of what those thoughts mean about the person who thinks them. Nature, whether a desert half a world away or the wilds just beyond the perimeter of the backyard, is always present. Masterful, powerful, painful, and beautiful. Above all, true.

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems inwardly and outwardly reflect on change: in landscape, in experiences, in perspective.

[Diamaya Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, I'm just glad I got to read it.
Splendid!