A Love Letter to Say There Is No Love

Maria Williams-Russell's debut chapbook is a dark and sometimes surreal collection where domestic life is not only lonely but buzzes with potential harm. Disillusioned, the poems offer language and images of home, motherhood and romantic love that come out of a resigned duress and which include bees, bats, car accidents, war, and strangers knocking at the door. Even so, the speaker of the poems finds ways to cope: "...when the men walk through the house/ I pretend my body is the frame/ and they a flock of birds/ caught for a moment in the rafters."