Yeah, yeah I could’ve conjured a better title for a press release but April has been unusually cruel this year with the debacle that was PoetFest and the juggernaut of a struggle with a spreadsheet poetry manuscript…’nuff said.
Our third release for National Poetry Month which is not spread sheet poetry…
Now when one of my former professors got in contact with me regarding a poetry manuscript from what seemed like a favored former student…I cringed a bit but I accepted due to the fact that he demonstrated compassion toward me and definitely supported me in ways when I was down at a bleak time in my life.
However when I started reading the blurbs by David Cope and Jim Cohn…my stomach dropped…I thought this is a lot of propping up for someone…please, please don’t be another rich kid who gets strung out on drugs then their parents get them a disability check as they slum it chic poor rendering them a writer…
“Melissa Wray’s Small Gestures is a masterpiece of short free verse forms,
beginning with gendered struggle involving
sexual harassment, and involving an arc of
struggles with the self and with others that
at times ends in madness, the nature of the
beast as it slouches toward its own humanity,
particularly charting one woman’s efforts to chart her own course. Wray is a free-verse Sappho; her book was 16 years in the making, leading at last to a mature vision of these powerful themes. The work is fearless, illuminating even in darkness, a worthy addition to the traditions of using “no word that doesn’t contribute to the presentation” while addressing themes that matter in human experience. “
—David Cope
“Melissa Wray’s Small Gestures frames a feminine worldview of constant sexual microaggressions, scarred and wounded bodies, relentless indignities, poverty and crushed dreams. Her poems present the wracked minutiae of raw observations moving through our streets and institutions. Wray’s ability to imprint and acknowledge the torment and pain of the inhuman human circus in which she herself descended is a blessed healing she delivers, not simply to herself, but to us all. Who among us has not watched over the perishing of loved ones, including parts of ourselves, to the grinding meat-wheel of lost hope and self-hatred that is the daily sustenance of addiction and the sound of dark subterranean rivers flooding these poems? And then, as if defying gravity and the laws of physics, in the broken mirror of Wray’s own post-beat sense of a Coltranesque love supreme, she cuts through her own despair as if ego was a mango pit left behind, and floods in a multigenerational illuminated space where no one need fear “losing you / to happiness.”
—Jim Cohn
Luckily, I’m not an asshole all the time.
The book is sixteen years in the making. Tight, short pieces with varying magnitudes of impact dealing with a slew of issues such as addiction, mental health and the death of loved one along with discovering yourself through the wilderness of youth.
It is good?
In my humble opinion being new in the publishing and writing game…it’s good but not for the reasons you think…you can tell by the intro who influenced the author’s work and it definitely shows through the first set of poems “Small Gestures” but once you start breaking into the second set “New Pictures” and “Iris” then you observe the poet Melissa Wray finding her actual voice, ready to cast aside those influences.
The entire collection is conventionally good especially on a technical level but watching Wray evolve or rather begin evolving from outside the wing’s of her mentors is the truly dazzling part of the work.
As cute as it is to be influenced by Walt Whitman and the Beats along with those who revere them, it’s best not to be a copy of a copy of a copy and Wray shatters that by the end of SMALL GESTURES…
Pink spaghetti straps
and blond hair
skimming
sharp shoulder blades
frail arms
and slim wrists
resting small hands
on narrow hips
short dress
barely covering
tight
slightly spread
thighs.
Standing
in front
of a gas station
on the corner
of Wealthy
and Division—
he
was beautiful.
Home
I am walking home
in the dark
rounding a familiar corner.
“Hey precious,
thanks for the cigarette,”
she says, and
“you better walk faster
in this neighborhood.”
I saw her
days before
in a seedy market
buying Faygo pop
with the last dollar
on her Bridge card.
She left that night
as I was lighting up
in the parking lot.
“Can I buy a cigarette from you? How much you want,
a quarter?”
I gave her one
without the quarter.
“Oh, thank you!
I’ll go home and
have my dinner
and a smoke.
Thank you!”
She remembered me
and thanked me again.
I continue walking.
A man in front of me
on the sidewalk
is pulling up
scratching
guttural sounds
from deep in his gut
in rhythm
with his step,
he turns slightly
and eyes me,
I try to pass him.
He taps me on the shoulder.
I continue walking.
He taps me on the shoulder
silently
unfolds a piece of paper
may I have $1.00
for foods?
I reach into my pocket
and hand him one.
He thanks me
in sign language
then pulls me in
for a hug.
He approached
politely,
“Excuse me, ma’am,”
in a high
raspy voice
whistling
through his few
remaining
yellowed teeth.
“I’m trying
to catch the bus.
Just need
sixty cents
to catch the bus.”
I retrieved my wallet.
He opened thick
short-fingered hands,
fingernails long
and painted black.
I gave him seventy-five.
“Just need
to catch the bus.”
Blocked
With eyes
looking past me
he tells me
to write every day
about mundane things.
smoke leaks
from his tight lips
as he pauses,
looks down,
grinds out his light
and says
he doesn’t write
anymore.
The Fruit Is Already In Our Mouths
Reach into the crate, hesitant hand hovering for a moment over the mango’s human heart shapes, until you find the one that looks “just right,” curved with colors that contrast and blend simultaneously. Pick it up to test it. If it is like a woman’s breast, smooth, its weight misleading for its size, move to the next test. Close your eyes and bring the stem end up close enough to touch your nose. If the scent is sticky-sweet, and there is the tiniest bit of give from its skin to its meaty inside, take it home.
There is an art to peeling a mango. There is slowness and exposure involved. Don’t disrespect it by merely cutting off the flesh in aggressive, uneven strips. Start small. Make one incision at the stem end, just deep enough to pierce through the skin. Drag it down and around the bottom of the fruit, then back up to meet itself. Start again at the stem, move over to the other, uncut, side and repeat. You will leave two lines circling through its thick skin, barely touching the meat.
Choose a side. Use one hand to softly sink your fingernails into the place where the two cuts meet. Sink in a little deeper, and lift, loosening skin from meat. Firmly hold the tip between your fingers. Slowly pull down toward the stem. There will be a soft tearing feeling, a moist sound. If you are patient and deliberate, the diamond-shaped piece of skin will remain whole even once removed. The meat underneath will not have a perfect smoothness, as it would have had you cut the skin off haphazardly. It will look a little torn. It will feel wet and granular. The smell will be raw and incredible. Your hands will become wetter and wetter as you continue to peel away the skin from all corners. The mango may slip from your hands entirely, its juice dripping down to your wrists, permeating the cutting surface.
Don’t wash the juice away so that you can manipulate the fruit more easily. Don’t be afraid to lick your fingers. Wipe your palms on your upper arms. Delve back in, more aware now that you have to respect its slippery qualities. Slide it whole, in and out of your hands, then cut the meat into smaller pieces, to taste again later.
The mango’s hard pit will be left behind, encased in meat that couldn’t quite be cut away. You can experience it, too. Bring it to your mouth. Circle a corner with your lips, and suck. The flesh will be so compliant that it may melt off without any urging from your teeth.
Those seem to be the sweetest parts.
Grand Rapids poet Melissa Wray was born in 1982. She is a graduate of Grand Rapids Community College and studied Health Psychology at Bastyr University in Seattle. She is currently a candlemaker. Melissa read with Dave Cope, alternately reciting work by Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg at the Wealthy Theatre celebration of beat writing in 2008. She received 2nd prize in the Dyer-Ives 50th anniversary poetry competition for her poem “Iris.” She has been published in Big Scream, Big Hammer, Napalm Health Spa, Gutter Eloquence, Voices, and Display. Small Gestures is her first book.
Dumpster Fire Press 