The Sacred Heart Motel

The Sacred Heart Motel

A review of The Sacred Heart Motel by Grace Kwan

Published on October 30, 2024

The image-work alone would justify getting your copy of The Sacred Heart Motel, Grace Kwan’s debut full-length poetry collection. I say “image-work,” but multiple senses show up on almost every page, as in the opening of “GLUE TRAP”:

The Sacred Heart Motel
Grace Kwan

Metonymy Press
$18.95
paper
104pp
9781998898169

My heart looks like the old yellow house where thin, mouse-bitten

walls separated our part of the basement from another

Chinese family. We could hear their daughter practice tongue

twisters, they could hear my mother scream when I went too far […]

These line breaks are masterful, splitting the thin walls and twisted tongues immigrants know so well. Indeed, the book’s dedication is “For migrants & visitors.” Yet, these are not just visitors to a country, but also to one’s heart. The table of contents, dubbed “directory,” maps seven different sections as if they were chambers – a term applicable to hearts and motels.

One of the sheer brilliances of Kwan’s book is turning migration into a love poem and love into a migration. Don’t even try to separate the political from the personal; there are too many transient rooms in the heart, unregistered hearts in any given room. And, of course, there’s the border – of desire, home, identity – where all the action happens: “the convergence of lives, motivations / riding shotgun,” as Kwan puts it, or rather wrenches it from our very hearts.mRb

Carlos A. Pittella is haunted by borders & bureaucracies but tries to haunt them back through poetry, most recently published in the chapbook footnotes after Lorca (above/ground press). Born in Rio de Janeiro, you may find him in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal & at www.carlosapittella.com.

Comments

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More Reviews

Mainstreaming Porn

Mainstreaming Porn

An in-depth look at the capitalist and corporate backdrop that informs sex and eroticism.

By Sruti Islam

Line Breaks

Line Breaks

An engaging and humanistic memoir that braids together George Galt’s own “writing life” with a history of the ...

By Adam Hill