Dwellers by Megan Mary Moore
Unsolicited Press, 2019
Dwellers, Megan Mary Moore tells us, is a pejorative term that her aunt used to describe her working-class family: “People who borrowed place / rented memory, ready to run.” This book blends the topics of poverty, a Catholic girlhood, and developing sexuality with unsparing honesty, and Moore skillfully employs the powerful sonic possibilities of poetry.
Dwellers captivates readers by unsettling them through the uncanny. Moore’s primary narrator, Meggie May, is a child of indeterminate, perhaps changing age, who sees more than she ought to. Moore uses the cadences of childhood to describe disturbing experiences. In “1 a.m. Listening to the Neighbors,” Meggie shows us childhood innocence, “Seven years old: lips were bologna / and kisses made sandwiches,” then shows how the adults break through that childhood lens:
Heard and swore he said,
Here’s a gun. You don’t deserve to live.
No way Jose. No gun in this home.
A careful tongue a careless ear:
Here’s a cunt who don’t deserve to live.
Brutality is clearly laid out, simply recounted, with disturbing frequency. In “Sandusky,” she tells us of a rental storage facility run by her parents: “There have been so many dead / cats but few dead / men in the places I’ve lived,” but this time, “I smelled him,” and later, “I missed him. Dead Man Smell gone / and me, alone.” Moore explodes the sentimental American mythos of small-town America by exposing the violence and emotional abuse endemic even among those who know one another, among neighbors, friends, family members.
Moore juxtaposes these hard lessons with moments of self-discovery that are surprising or humiliating to the older Meggie May. Patriarchy, external and internalized, roars into view in “The Apartments Across from St. Aloysius Gonzaga”: “Ashley and I cartwheeled hoping the cars would honk and they did. // We waved at people filing out the doors until an old lady grabbed / Ashley, she said we should be in church not a 2-piece.” Yet as Meggie grows up, she begins to see the ways that sensuality and sexuality are woven into Catholicism, explored with sly humor in “My Ceiling Fell in on Me,” “Girlhood,” and “In The Holy of Holies or the Last Stall in the Basement of St. Elizabeth High School.” Each of these poems takes on sexual fantasy and masturbation mixed with the ecstasy and shame inherent in Catholic upbringings, “panties around our ankles and Bibles in our laps.”
Moore’s facility with poetic language deserves special notice. Her opening poem, “Meggie May,” provides an example of her effective use of consonance and assonance: “was born from a storm to a place / where rain stripped wallpaper / and floors stained / when popsicles dripped.” Throughout the book, Moore chooses concise construction and occasional rhyme and alliteration to create a rhythm that at times recalls nursery rhymes or lullabies. But these are aligned with the Grimm versions, not bowdlerized; these are the stories of frightening adults and burgeoning, threatening adolescent female sexuality. Dwellers is an impressive debut collection, and Moore is a poet to watch.
–
Kim Jacobs-Beck is the author of a chapbook, Torch (Wolfson Press). Her poems can be found in Nixes Mate, Gyroscope, Apple Valley Review, SWWIM Every Day, roam literature, and Peach Velvet, among others. She is the founder of Milk & Cake Press and teaches at the University of Cincinnati Clermont.