You will find “( soulville )” placed next to the “ Aries Baby White Chocolate Lemon Cake & Cream Cheese Frosting ,” a recipe in full , a recipe fat with flavor . The fat of the land . The offering of a mother , or a lover — love as sugared food . “ They ’ re real recipes , what I was cooking at the time I was writing those poems ,” says Ray . “ I like process-based work . I wanted to give some sense of that in the book . Process includes what sustains the work and what is ancillary .”
There are ten recipes in this book , including “ Ruthie ’ s Mom ’ s Shrimp & Grits ” and “# 1 Stunner : Best Cookie ”— both evidencing the cultural mixing between Black and White in this country , with Shrimp & Grits evolving in African-American low country kitchens ( from the original hominy supplied by Native Americans ), and “# 1 Stunna ” being a Big Tymers hip-hop hit from 2000 ( and popular Black slang which meant anyone in the culture might use it ). The ingredient “ white chocolate ” appears twice in the recipes . Is this the time to mention that the poet selfidentifies as white , and that her ex-partner is Black ?
Race and interracial love and threat live in these poems , baked in . Ray talks about her life now as the mother of a brown-skinned child and the question of guns . “ Most days like most women , I feel more for my son ’ s vulnerability than my own ,” says Ray . “ My son asks me : ‘ Why won ’ t you let me have a Nerf gun ? [ I tell him ‘ no ’] because I think toys like that are designed to teach little boys that guns are fun . Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist , but such playthings serve to create army fodder . Guns shouldn ’ t be seen as fun .” Ray wrote this book when many mothers are burying black and brown children killed by police . She spoke about 12-year old Tamir Rice gunned-down by a Cleveland cop as he played with a bb gun . “ I don ’ t want my son to be terrified of the world and I don ’ t want to terrify him of it ,” says Ray . “ But it scares me , this blurriness between play and reality .”
“ I ’ ve never owned a gun and never will ,” says Ray . “ They scare me . I ’ ve had friends who , since the election , say we should arm ourselves . But it ’ s like that Chekhov cliché — you bring a gun on stage , it must go off .”
A gun can be pretty on a book cover . A gun can be powerful as a poetic form . But in real life , it ’ s still a death machine . This is the promise it was built to keep .
Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of
Government Girl : Young and Female in the White House ( HarperCollins / Ecco ) and was the lead contributor to
Voices from the Storm : The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath ( McSweeney ’ s ). She chronicles stories for
The Katrina Experience : An Oral History Project . Her recent narrative nonfiction has been published in Callaloo , The Offing , Apogee Journal , The Nervous Breakdown , Entropy , The Butter , Cura , The Atlas Review , and The Florida Review where her essay was a finalist for the 2014 Editors ’ Prize for nonfiction . Originally from Detroit , Le Melle is the founder of
Harlem Against Violence , Homophobia , and Transphobia , and the co-founder of
Harlem ’ s First Person Plural Reading Series .
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