Ghosts and Predators

An uneasy truth about love: it's rarely given and received in equal measure. Two poets hold that truth up to the light — one finding tenderness in it, one finding danger.

Kelli Russell Agodon's poem is strange and beautiful and a little haunted. Ghosts let themselves in. People who can't touch still drink wine together as the moon rises in their individual glasses. She wants a bottle of difficult love — the kind that, when poured, turns the universe into a chalice of stars. And then, quietly, the most tender line: the blood telling the bruise, I am here for you. Even pain shows up for you.

Vievee Francis is colder, clearer, more taxonomic. She sorts the world into types: those who give love, those who need it, and those who prey on it. The cardinals, bright and easily lit. The rabbits, soft and trembling. And then the eagle-eyed ones with talons, for whom any furred thing will do. The poem ends with the speaker walking out into the winter and making her own quiet declaration: I know what I am. Which type, she doesn't say. That's the poem's gift — and its chill.