Dear friend You don't leave much for the undertaker So fully you've inhabited there I've never minded your not being here you being a favorite hallucination but I wonder how you speak of us ....so begins one of the poems in Brash Ice, which, unlike its predecessors, Far From Algiers and Brushstrokes and Glances, looks back on a dervish's trek through the world of illusions and tells us what beguiled and enlightened him. ******** Djelloul Marbrook was born in Algiers and grew up in New York. He served in the U.S. Navy and for many years was a newspaper reporter and editor (Providence Journal, Elmira Star- Gazette, Baltimore Sun, Winston-Salem Journal, Washington Star, among others). His awards include the Wick Poetry Prize (2007), the Literal Latté fiction prize (2008), and the International Book Award in Poetry (2010). His poetry has been published in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Taos Poetry Journal, Orbis (UK), Le Zaporogue (Denmark), Oberon, The Same, Reed, Fledgling Rag, Poets Against the War and Poemeleon. He lives in New York's mid-Hudson Valley with his wife Marilyn and maintains a lively presence on Facebook, Twitter, Behance and at djelloulmarbrook.com.