Landscape with Happily Ever After by Lynn Melnick

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend November 12, 2014   Landscape with Happily Ever After   Lynn Melnick

Near midnight I’m held hostage to the hazy upshot in the corner   velvet near a laced up tree and curious how I got here.   What a crowd! I think and I think I should hoard my stash in my shoe.   Did you catch the census takers trying to autocorrect the shelterbelt out of my history   when meanwhile   I’ve been fending off elements since I first showed up at this latitude so   I don’t trust easy.   In 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 you ask me outside   where the music dims against the complicated bramble   and I love how the moon   is gilding the rusted basketball hoop in the driveway and bouncing off the sheen of the rubber tree   and onto this fable in a city that bleeds its saline soil   into another difficult year.            Copyright © 2014 by Lynn Melnick. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “Unusual for me, I wrote the title to this poem before I wrote the poem. I wanted to try out some optimism! In most of my ‘Landscape’ poems, California’s flora is the backdrop to various horribleness. But here I wanted it to be a kind of antidote to that horribleness.” —Lynn Melnick   Lynn Melnick is the author of If I Should Say I Have Hope (YesYes Books, 2012) and the co-editor, with Brett Fletcher Lauer, of Please Excuse This Poem: 100 Poets for the Next Generation (Viking, 2015). She teaches at the 92nd Street Y and lives in Brooklyn. Most Recent Book by Melnick   If I Should Say I Have Hope (YesYes Books, 2012) "A Tyrant Seeks Conclusion in the Known Self" by Emily Kendal Frey "My Heart" by Kim Addonizio "I Have News for You" by Tony Hoagland Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038