Book Review: Line Study of a Motel Clerk by Allison Pitinii Davis

Line Study of a Motel Clerk
Poems by Allison Pitinii Davis
Baobab Press, April 2017
$17.00; 68pp
ISBN-13: 978-1936097135
Reviewed by Paul David Adkins

Language as weapon. Language as war. Allison Pitinii Davis’ debut poetry collection Line Study of a Motel Clerk traces three generations of immigrants as they assimilate into the United States. These Jewish and Greek immigrants join the melting pot of their new nation at a frightful cost: permanently abandoning their names, their history, and their lineage in a desperate search for freedom and safety in a country that has no interest in offering either benefit to these strangers, these usurpers of The American Dream.

“Greetings from the End of the Line” discusses the erasure of the speaker’s ancestor-immigrants. The adopted nation “cut letters from our names / when there wasn’t enough alphabet / to go around, who scaled back / until we grew lighter / than onion skin . . .” Likewise, in “Inheritance,” the speaker observes identity-violence committed against her kindred poet Charles Reznikoff: “Reznikoff’s mother moved to America / and had a son. She wanted to name him Ezekiel after his father. The doctor said ‘Call him Charlie, / he’ll be grateful.’”

As these immigrants master English, they discover its power, but at an awful toll, as if they are trespassing on its meaning. “The Jewish Cemetery at Youngstown” records the state-sanctioned murder of daughter-of-immigrants Sandra Scheuer during the Kent State Massacre. But “Language Loosened Back” gives the reason:  “. . . why / the Guard shot at Kent is not ‘students threw rocks’ but / some ‘co-eds called Guards motherfucking cocksuckers.’” Another hint at the alienation of immigrants is that the cemetery Davis describes is “at” Youngstown, not “of” or “in” the city. The immigrant experience is not to be mistaken with the American experience.

Holocaust imagery perforates the collection, evidence of generational trauma suffered by Jews though separated by an ocean from the Shoah. In “The Marquee is Empty at the Big Rig Saloon,” the speaker observes, “If the mother didn’t run after / her children into the fire, / the guard would say, ‘What kind of mother are you!’ / and push her in.” There is no distance between immigrants and their collective conscience.

Line Study of a Motel Clerk examines the underbelly of the American Dream. In timely fashion, Davis presciently and precisely records the immigrant story. The loss of name, the surrender of identity. Language is both a key and door, reduced to tapping a bell, flicking an ash, trudging to the beer cooler on a freezing morning with case after case of Coors.

Paul David Adkins served in the US Army for 21 years, three months, and 18 days. Lit Riot Press published his three poetry collections: La Dona, La Llorona; Flying Over Baghdad with Sylvia Plath; and Operational Terms and Graphics.