
Review by Jami Macarty
As the title gutter rainbows implies, “grit” and “glitter” coexist in Melissa Eleftherion’s third poetry collection. “Double consciousness” is also a characteristic of the poems’ speaker: “Before [she] understood the war of misogyny / [she] battled [her] own blood for understanding.” The poems also double in their artistic purpose, offering the poet “an attempt to / convene with the memory of the / interruption” while offering the reader “the story of [a girl’s] formation.”
The collection opens with Eleftherion’s portrayal of a “defiant,” self-possessed girl, navigating life between her own “kindling” and the challenging, often dangerous interactions with men. Eleftherion’s girl was “taught to hold space for the lion / sit quiet at his table” and to endure the “street mouths” as she walks “the avenue of eyeballs.” The poems highlight how these power dynamics and threats “damage” the girl’s sense of self-worth, leading to “internalized hatred” and “misogyny.”
As Eleftherion explores how the male gaze and patriarchal expectations “fracture” a girl’s life, she draws comparisons with how a geological depression interrupts a landform. Fracture variously appears in the poems as “gutter,” “gash,” “crack,” “ditch,” “pit,” “trench,” but in each case describes the shape of a landform that is lower in elevation than the surrounding area. This metaphor provides a visual and visceral vocabulary for experiences of trauma and the challenges faced by girls “fighting to be seen beneath” “a line of semen.”
Dear Sister Reader, “her story is my story is your story the axes we intersect.” Along with Eleftherion, we “hover as transformation / in the interstices / warrior, queen.”
So too, the transformation of trauma into poetry. Melissa Eleftherion’s gutter rainbows constructs a “lyric from the detritus.” While the poems explore themes of faults and fractures, they simultaneously reach “up up,” embodying true feminist resilience.
gutter rainbows by Melissa Eleftherion. Querencia Press, August 2024.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize (forthcoming University of Nevada Press), and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2024) and Mind of Spring (Vallum Chapbook Series, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices, visit her author website.