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.

Dylan Krieger is writing the apocalypse in real time in south Louisiana. She is the Managing Editor of Fine Print and the author of six earlier collections of poetry: Giving Godhead (Delete, 2017), Dreamland Trash (St. Julian, 2018), No Ledge Left to Love (Ping Pong, 2018), The Mother Wart (Vegetarian Alcoholic, 2019), Metamortuary (Nine Mile, 2020), and Soft-Focus Slaughterhouse (11:11, 2021). Find her at DylanKrieger.com.