Predators Welcome

Predators Welcome is a book of poems written by one sibling in search of another. Eager to recover some shared mythology with the rest of the world, the speaker of these poems calls for a witness-any witness-to confirm that the frightening cosmologies of childhood were more than just isolated daydreams. Challenging, broadening, and redefining our understanding of predatory animals-and, yes, that means us-this book lays bare both personal and societal cycles of violence and neglect, suggesting their intergenerational reenactment is one way we paradoxically prove ourselves to be a single human family, "raised by the same wolves," with ancestors whose stories must not only be told, but lived and relived. Trapped in such a paradoxical circumstance, the human-as-predator is most dangerous, and yet, most connected to and emboldened by history. In this way, these poems urge us to find commonality not merely in past atrocities, but in a present and future rebellion from historical precedent itself.