Skin. Hair. Bones. by Maria McLeod

In her new chapbook, “Skin. Hair. Bones,” Maria McLeod writes about Eros and remorse, love and its betrayal.  Passion is a seductive prison, a delicious circle of hell to which lovers are damned.  As one of them says (describing the anesthesia before surgery), “What better way to stave off sorrow/than to luxuriate in the abyss.” While the ostensible subject of “Skin. Hair. Bones.” is the prison of the carnal, the real subjects are mortality and grief.  What a marvelously intelligent and provocative book this is.

–Lynn Emanuel, author of “The Nerve of It: New and Selected Poems”

With its visceral and fluid language, its stunning images of memory, dream, and reflection, “Skin. Hair. Bones.” constructs a story told in bodies. In the beginning is the tongue: the speaker’s tongue defines her lover as wrist, mouth, muscle, sacrament—a reshaping of faith that animates the poems of this collection. Through the skilled tongue of the poet, everything is embodied, including the soul, and everything brought to light: “we were chewed off at the ankles the wrists / we were out of the trap.” This is a wonderfully astute and adventurous collection.

–Barbara Edelman, author of “Dream of the Gone-From City”