© 2021 Don Yorty. All rights reserved.
I was so happy to go and listen to Melinda Wilson read at KGB that I couldn’t wait to get there. Her poems are sexy and witty and when they are angry, they smile. Her ability to focus on an image and stay there centers her poems so they are easy to hear and see, and I mean easy in a good, not a bad, way. Your mind will never wander when Melinda Wilson reads.
In August, I read at the Poor Mouth Reading Series that Melinda runs in the Bronx at An Beal Bocht, an Irish pub with good food and drink, and room enough for a raucous appreciative crowd. She is one of the movers and shakers who keep the poetry flowing in New York. Enjoy her reading in the Vimeo below.
You can check out Melinda Wilson’s chapbook, Amplexus (Dancing Girl Press) here:
One of the poems in the Vimeo:
Fisherman’s Sonnet
I once heard a used condom called
a Coney Island Whitefish and wondered
what cold-blooded vertebrate that makes me.
With my gills peeled open in these wholly hostile
waters, the shore is thick with my dead.
But most whitefish have bones, do they not?
Little skeletons holding their flesh
tight to their sides. Those tiny ivory needles
that lodge in the throat when we are too ravenous
to withstand any delay. Under the boardwalk,
the love-carcass looks nearly transparent,
more jelly than fish. More guts than vessel.
More impulse than animal.
Poor little Whitefish, forgotten so soon.
Melinda Wilson
“Each Night I Throw You Into The River” in Small Orange Journal. Check it out.
An article about the Poor Mouth Reading Series that Melinda runs at An Beal Bocht in the Bronx:
And here is An Beal Bocht. Check them out: