Emilee Kinney reviews
My Fingers Are Whales and other stories
of Cetology
by Kelly Gray

Kelly Gray has challenged and transformed the boundaries of experiencing poetry. Her micro-chapbook, My Fingers Are Whales and other stories of Cetology not only enraptures readers with an intense control over line and image, it’s also accompanied by audio storytelling designed by Meredith Johnson, voice acting by Kelly Gray and Gage Opdenbrouw, and Gray’s own nautical art to further transport the reader. This undertaking is a result of pure and boundless passion. 

In these poems, the grandfather shows the speaker “how to use a whale cleaver, how to hold it with both hands and breath in and breath out as [she] hacked.” Although she shares his love for whales, she doesn’t become a whaler like him:

I would look at my bones swim in the space between my dresser and legs.
My hand traversed galaxy of star and seaweed.
Quiet child breath, the whooshing of marine sigh.
I wrapped a blanket of barnacles around small shoulders, infused body with breadth, 
and dove.

Gray shows how we hand down tradition and familial culture to our children and how through watching and learning, through curiosity, they shape it into their own. These poems explore and confront the danger, reality, and beauty of whales and through association, of the speaker’s family as well: “He knew not what he killed, only what he loved.” 

Here is a “topographical map of hearts” charted through a range of forms, extraordinary world building, and a mysticism that lingers well past the last line. My Fingers Are Whales and other stories of Cetology considers the “future of folklore” and ultimately, is a manifestation of “ear-bones” –with it, we too can hear the ocean. 

Kelly Gray (she/her/hers) resides on Coast Miwok land with her beloved, painter Gage Opdenbrouw, one perfect cat, two spoiled yet emotionally bereft dogs, and a beautiful human child. Kelly’s writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has been selected by Passages North, Atticus Review, The Inflectionist Review, amongst other publications. Her book of poetry, ‘Instructions for an Animal Body’ is available through Moon Tide Press. 

Emilee Kinney hails from the small farm-town of Kenockee, Michigan, near one of the Great Lakes: Lake Huron. She received her BA in Creative Writing and History from Albion College in Albion, Michigan and is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, MacQueen’s Quinterly, SWWIM and elsewhere. Kinney is a poetry editor for MAYDAY and maintains her own website featuring contemporary poetry and book recommendations: (https://www.emileekinneypoetry.com/)