Apology of a Girl Who is Told She is Going to Hell by Devon Moore

Apology of a Girl Who is Told She is Going to Hell

by Devon Moore

Mayapple Press, 2015

ISBN 978-1936419548

78 p.p.

I was excited to read Devon Moore’s new book, Apology of a Girl Who is Told She is Going to Hell, from Mayapple Press, a publisher based out of Woodstock, NY that has done a terrific job of supporting women’s voices, especially in its 2015 catalogue. Moore’s book is intriguing from the first glance at its cover, a beautiful image of a woman whose hair becomes the sea above which a boat fights the current. The title of this piece by artist Valentina Contreras is “voy a navegar la pena pa’ no ahogarme en el viaje” (I’m going to sail over sorrow so this journey doesn’t drown me). This image—it’s title—sets course for the reader. Our speaker is the compass pointing the direction, and we climb into the ship, turn the page, and set sail.

The collection opens with “Red.” This poem invites us to float at the intersection of happiness and loss. It encompasses distance, absence, and loss. With our speaker and her mother, we are left aching for the color of a dress bleached longed ago. Even though we have never see it in all its red brilliance, we are immediately reminded that once lost, some things will never return to us.

This book is on the longer end of poetry collections, and without any section breaks, the reader isn’t given a chance to breathe. It can feel overwhelming at times. The book takes its time working up to its heart, but rediscovers its course at the poem “Going to Ocean.” This poem incorporates scientific, logical language to create a conceit, pushing the image toward metaphor. It describes a beach scene—reminding us of that evocative cover art—and ends, “The sign says: If taken, swim parallel to the shore.” This line functions as a warning to readers that the storm is picking up. It foreshadows that we may be swept away. Sure enough, two poems later, we learn about the speaker’s father in “My Father Wishes for Death.”

Later in the book, we revisit the father in “Bringing Water to my Father While He Cuts the Grass.” This poem signifies a major shift in narrative: the poems have gathered their energy for the tidal wave crash that we sail all the way to the final line of the final poem, “Drawing the Mind”: “I wrote, Mother, I’m getting better./ Look for me.”

Probably because of personal experience, I’m drawn most to these father poems. “The Skeleton Pier” offers a haunting experience of the death of a loved one. Through the mundane but painful fact that “there are companies that rent the beds/ on which our fathers die,” Moore gives us a lovely elegy that remembers the strength of a father, replaying

…the restraints, beige

velcro, the complicated straps used to

hold him down when he wouldn’t stop standing and falling—

standing and falling—

And as if that simple, tender image of a dying wrist in a Velcro strap isn’t enough, the poem continues

Eyes wide, the same shade of coal as mine—

See the terrified ocean animal in him crawl

up to peer behind his eyelids, see it reach out

its deliberate strength and peel back each strap

trapping him down, see my chest bone cracking

open to show this hurricane heart still

circling hope—Please don’t die…

The syntax and the rhythm of the circling and falling pull us forward. We dip into the ocean we’re sailing above; with our speaker and her father, we’re trying hard not to drown.

Later in this section, our speaker finds strength and power in raising her lost father from the dead. One line in particular stands out from the poem “Playing Pool at ‘Taps’”: “I am the custodian of his ashes.” Moore’s strength is taking mundane images and details—custodian—and coaxing them into bellowing louder than a barge leaving port. Our speaker allows herself to be vulnerable with us, admitting

But I am getting better at this,

selfish daughter that I am,

resurrecting him more, not less.

Apology of a Girl Who is Told She is Going to Hell culminates in a beautiful elegy, “Patricide.” This poem invites us into the most tender moment and it’s this gentle affection rather than the raging storm that capsizes us:

I say, Let me bath you one last time,

and I anoint him with Johnson’s baby wash

on a soft pink washcloth.

Here we are in water that is not threatening, but is still heartbreaking. Once again, Moore slays us with the simplest image: baby wash. We’re reminded that strength isn’t always brute, that drowning isn’t always violent, that the journey can drown us in so many ways. Moore also reminds us that we’re stronger than we think—that we are always learning to hold our breath.

***

Devon Moore is a native of Buffalo, NY. She currently lives in Syracuse, NY where she teaches writing at Syracuse University and SUNY Oswego. A former Syracuse University Fellow, she has an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, Foothill, Ovenbird, Cider Press Review, Harpur Palate, Stone Canoe, The Cortland Review, Meridian, New Ohio Review and Juked. Her first poetry book, Apology of a Girl Who Is Told She Is Going to Hell, which was a semi-finalist for the 2013 Crab Orchard First Book Award and the University of Wisconsin Press Brittingham and Pollak poetry series, was published from Mayapple Press in May 2015.