Leaves Surface Like Skin

Leaves Surface Like SkinIn 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

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 of mortality hovers, not so much afterlife as underlife. Menting has a gift for moody and luminous phrasing: "For some, the world is wood tick wicked." There's magic to a collection that does such heavy lifting with a light touch.

--Sandra Beasley