You'll Find Me In The Darkness ,If I Let You
Artist: Anthony B. Perales
Genre: Poetry
Publication date: August 6 2016
Publisher: END FWY Press
Edited by Craig Ibarra
Cover Art Aaron Portillo
Edition & Language: Second Edition, English
Format: Chapbook
Pages: 48
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 in
The New ENDFRWY 2nd edition will be available Aug 6, 2016 . Limited release of 75 copies. Each copy signed by the author.
$5.99
2nd Edition Copies ARE AVAILABLE
The first Chapbook to be released with the original works of poetry and prose by A B Perales. Self published under " DeadEnd Press" with cover art by Aaron Portillo.
This 41 page Chapbook is filled with 20 works of poetry and prose selected by the Author himself.
Originally released May of 2014.
Copies are no longer available.
The second Chapbook released with 20 more original works of poetry and prose by A B Perales.Self published under Poppy Press set for release September of 2015. The cover art is a photograph of the author himself as a 6 year old in 1979.Includes such works as
"Copies will be available September 2015
The poetry of Anthony B. Perales speaks to the harsh realities of his life, which he acknowledges in his two chapbooks: You’ll Find Me In The Darkness If I Let You (2014) and Arm The Outcast (2015).The poetry comprises straightforward and telling narratives about growing up in San Pedro, chasing the dragon, spending time in prison, learning native doctrine in the desert of Southern California, losing love, and finding poetry. He wrote his first poem in 2007 when he was thirty-three years old.
[Poetry of A.B. Perales] Although there is, at times, a filtered, contextual anger in his poetry, Perales does not vent. Quite [Arm the Outcast] the contrary. He allows the reader in, bit by bit, like an introvert weighing the consequences of revealing too much. Yet, paradoxically, he reveals a lot, giving the reader admission into the darkness of his world through a poetry that says: This is real. It happened. I do not lie. I do not exaggerate. If you bear with me, I will tell you what I know, what I have seen. Likewise, Perales does not do surface poetry. His narrative voice belies the complexities of the submerged layers that constitute the poet’s oeuvre.
Two poems in particular illustrate the submerged layers that prod the reader to go deeper, to find the meaning and meanings waiting to be gleaned. In the poem “All I Need” (Arm The Outcast), the poet is given a twenty-page pamphlet about what he “can no longer enjoy” and nothing about what he can abuse. He rationalizes the need to escape, and opines how his “mother has her wine,” his father has “his faith and his guns,” and his brothers “all have their futures.” Then he moves quickly to what holds him together:
All I have is this. And if it ever leaves me.
If the words stop coming.
Then what I am but another
empty useless soul.
Taking up space.
Fighting off the demons.
Waiting on the
darkness to come.
Given the reality in which he has lived—prison, heroin, alcohol—the poet finds an altogether different one that holds him togethera reality of words that shape his poetry. If he loses the words, he knows the darkness will surely envelop him.