Day

October 18, 2017

Leaves Surface Like Skin (Poems)

McIntyre Amy
Leaves Surface Like Skin

By Michelle Menting. Terrapin Books: West Caldwell, NJ, 2017.

In Leaves Surface Like Skin, Michelle Menting articulates gorgeous, strange visions of nature inflected by human interference. A forest is interrupted by a graveyard of Bob’s Big Boy statuettes; ruling cockroaches populate a nuclear fall-out film; lichen becomes litter; a horse and farrier practice their choreography, as he “let[s] her lean on him, her hips cocked, almost delicate.” These poems teem with litany, landscape, literal and figurative image; an awareness ...