STATE LINES
Lynn Melnick’s gritty poems directly address themes of misogyny and sexual violence. Her book “Landscape With Sex and Violence” revisits personal episodes in which men have objectified, harassed and abused her. In these poems, the California landscape is always important — cinematic backdrops against which violent dramas play out. “Landscape With Fog and Fencepost,” for example, drops us into a scenario potentially life-threatening for the poem’s speaker. She’s tied naked to a redwood fencepost waiting for her perpetrator to return. Fortunately, Melnick’s avatar has wit and smarts on her side. The final lines also hint that she’s held some power in reserve. “Landscape With Sex and Violence” is vital reading for the #MeToo movement. Landscape With Fog and Fencepost I hear you in the kitchen assembling soup from plastic and kicking the cabinets again which is why they’re unsteady but what isn’t and it doesn’t matter you can’t hammer a nail without drilling a hole though me first. Left bare where you fastened me this morning to the deck, faded to gray inside the fogged air muffling coastal California I’m tied to the redwood of the fencepost but I’m done with begging naked because this is only a blip in a lifetime of skin. Cold, I bump up and try to think about things other than cold like how once you lit my hair on fire and I watched it in the periphery alight to my scalp before I realized I knew a way to stop it. “Landscape With Fog and Fencepost” from “Landscape With Sex and Violence” (c) 2018 by Lynn Melnick. Appears with the permission of YesYes Books. All rights reserved.