Friends and Assassins: Poems

In the powerful poems of her fifth collection, Heather Ross Miller reveals the traps in daily life, especially those set for the innocent and the cautious - poisoned tap water, a date turned to rape, oppressive domesticity. One poem deals with the brutality of butterfly collecting and ends with a woman caught in a net, unable to breathe. In another, man-eating plants catch and devour those who pass too close. Some of the victims in Friends and Assassins contemplate the pleasures of revenge, some go beyond contemplation, but all of them gain strength by confronting the truth.
With deceptively simple language and moments of wry humor, Miller sketches the dimensions of danger around us all.