Lynn Melnick | A Referendum | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Lynn Melnick is the author of the poetry collections Landscape with Sex and Violence and If I Should Say I Have Hope. Her poetry has appeared in APR, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and A Public Space.

Lynn Melnick's Website

Also by Lynn Melnick: Landscape with Sex and Violence If I Should Say I Have Hope Landscape with Loanword and Solstice

November 6, 2018
Poets Resist
2018 Midterm Elections
Special Feature

Lynn Melnick

A Referendum

In 1994 the man I loved told me I dress myself wrong

so I exchanged my body

for cash and then for clothes.

I got away.

In cold weather my ribs ache and remind me I’ve been kicked

but I’m telling you I got away.

I got so far

that in 1998 I left somebody’s remodeled kitchen

because a pack of invited men cornered me loudly

when I suggested that our president is destructive to women.

Outside, another pack of men

stood near the doorframe of a headstone warehouse

and when one of them asked,

“Can I own your body for an hour?”

I wondered out loud about overtime.

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