Overview

Lorine Niedecker writes about the contemporaneous existence of past, present and future in organisms like minerals and rocks. These breathing capsules catch us in crystalline as if we were vapor. However, we are not vapor. We catch them too. In declivities and emotional residue. In grief & indelible skull designs. An exchange over time in pockets and leaves. An exchange that fosters reciprocity. Symbiosis of exchanges. gutter rainbows is about transformation through trauma. It's about growing up in Brooklyn & forming alliances with sidewalks. About being a girl on the verge of something shattering. About the fur. Many of the poems in this collection are based on a type of mineral. Melissa Eleftherion works with the language of minerals and rocks to tell a story of the relationship between women & geological trauma, along with the sediment of betrayal that lingers in our foundation. This book is about trusting yourself enough to claw your way out.

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9781963943030

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Reviews

"""Melissa Eleftherion has conjured a spectral labyrinth of psyche and precision. The poems in this collection oscillate between the visceral and the ethereal, exploring themes of identity, desire, and existential yearning with linguistic play that is both brutal and beautiful....Here, human experiences crystallize, reflecting natural beauty and human intervention-the cuts that form gems out of us, the fractures defining our most intimate landscapes....This collection is for anyone who has felt their own fractures, who has been both mineral and sculptor in the relentless pursuit of self-definition."" -MK Chavez, winner of the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles award & author of Dear Animal. ""I love Melissa Eleftherion's gutter rainbows: the surprises, the intelligence, and the human stories attached to all of it. ""No one owns a body,"" she writes, and yet the works recursively connect human to natural realms. This is a book I will return to, just to see how the poet crafts these miracles."" -Denise Low, author & Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita ""I've always delighted in the accumulated moments, rushes, staggers, staccatos and fragments of Melissa Eleftherion's propulsive lyric. There is such a delight of sound and rhythm, and gutter rainbows is awash with the best of what her work simultaneously provides: an anxious calm, fine precision and concussive force. Her poems are akin to the ocean: as vast and dangerous as it is deep."" -rob mclennan, author & publisher for above/ground press"

Author Information

Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Mills College, and San Jose State University. They are the author of two poetry collections, field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (Querencia Press, 2024), & twelve chapbooks including abject sutures (above/ground press, 2024). Her work has been widely published & featured in venues like Quarter after Eight, Sixth Finch, Entropy, & Barren Magazine. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

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