Montana Ray : The Concrete Poems of ( guns & butter )
By Stacy Parker Le Melle
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I ’ ve never owned a gun and never will . 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 . — Montana Ray
Born in 1974 , I was too young to watch Blaxploitation films first run but soon I ’ d admire the images of Black goddesses and guns and everything we were supposed to want in America — the movie poster iconography of sex , power , and money . Look at Johnnie Hill on that poster for
Velvet Smooth . Pam Grier cradling her sawed-off shotgun on the poster for
Coffy . They looked strong . They looked hot . They looked like they didn ’ t take mess from anyone . With a gun , you could believe you were finally free . As long as you were never overpowered by an opponent . As long as the Feds didn ’ t show up armed to the teeth .
In America , notions of gun rights , and merits , are fiercely debated . I live in Harlem in 2017 . In the 1980s , drugtrade crime overwhelmed these streets . Today , I feel a strong level of personal safety . I close my green steel door and believe I ’ ve protected myself and my family from the outside world . We don ’ t keep guns . We think they make us unsafe . Yet I ’ m aware that personal well-being is just that — personal . I wish all of my neighbors would
melt down their guns but I don ’ t know what trauma they can ’ t bear to repeat . What promise the gun whispers when it ’ s hidden in the drawer .
The
Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence reports that in 2010 there were 31,076 Americans who lost their lives to gun-involved homicides , suicides , and unintentional shootings , per CDC statistics . That year we lost three Americans per hour to gun violence . In 2011 , according to FBI data presented by
Everytown for Gun Safety , 53 % of women murdered with guns in the U . S . were killed by intimate partners or family members . Many gun-owners carry guns to fend off attackers , but the
Gun Violence Archive statistics as presented by Armed with Reason show that in 2014 there were fewer than 1600 verified defensive gun uses . Guns promise to protect us from aggressors but the statistics show we have a much higher chance of being hurt by guns than being helped by them .
The first time I see poet
Montana Ray ’ s book ( guns & butter ) I am struck by the cover art Fresh Bouquet by
Dawn Whitmore . For me , it is a new iconography with its hand-painted pistol on a flower print-like wallpaper in a mother ’ s kitchen . In the corner , a handful of decorative blue gems . Is this the haul from a woman ’ s heist ? I look again . What ’ s the takeaway from this feminized tableau ? Can a woman ever get out ahead carrying death on her hip ?
The pretty gun on the cover of ( guns & butter ) seduces you to open the book and encounter more guns . But this time , they are poems shaped as guns , and they are complicated works of art . In this collection , Montana Ray creates both literary and visual art with her concrete poems , a form of poetry where the shape of words on the page construct meaning . “ Concrete poetry is about machinery ,” says Ray in an interview . “ The founders of the concrete poetry movement in Brazil sought to create poem machines .” Ray ’ s concrete poems form pistols , and pop-guns , and upside-down guns if you count the recipes she includes as text . “ The form allows you to work out what you ’ re trying to say ,” says Ray . Montana Ray ’ s gun poems contain many truths at once , especially when juxtaposed to her printed recipes for white chocolate banana bread , a chorizo and egg dish , and a rum cocktail — the “ butter ” of the book , sustenance that can be nourishing or bloating , depending on your intake .
Ray ’ s first inspiration for a gun-shaped concrete poem came from a man ’ s gun-shaped tattoo . “ He was a crush of mine who worked a tattoo parlor near my house . He ’ d just gotten a new tattoo of Billy the Kid ’ s gun from 1873 .
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