Poem Entering the Apple Valley Target (Lynn Melnick)

Isn't it considered bad form to put the word 'poem' in your poem's title? Perhaps, perhaps, but Lynn Melnick does so in today's poem - a neat, anxiety-ridden traipse about shopping/feeling overwhelmed/buying comfort from a store.

N is shopping at the Apple Valley Target, which I Googled for the below image and found is a SuperTarget. No wonder N feels overwhelmed upon entering it!

I like that N enters the Target and feels almost compelled to shop - to join the other shoppers. She feels anxious, but because of social pressures ("these racks of acrylic winter apparatus / won’t dazzle out of my head") and advertising ("the weight of America’s sales and specials") she also feels that maybe by buying the right things, she'll find her way out of her discomfort. Or as the author says herself, "I get confused and I can’t breathe and I can barely remember who I am or what I want. And then I buy something I don’t need."

Although I don't have anxiety like her when shopping at big box stores, I have definitely left a Target with something I don't need just because it seemed as though I should buy something. I think I'm not alone in doing that.

I like this poem for taking a mundane, common experience (shopping at a Target) and turning it into a poem about everyday American life that also touches on mental unstableness, consumer culture and comfort/need.

Favorite line: "that I was different than I am / in my own skin in this infinity / mirror, instructed such / to seduce myself, to go on."