Ghosts and Predators - Two poems filled with ache..

An uneasy truth about love: it's rarely given and received in equal measure. Kelli Russell Agodon's "Ask Your Doctor If Poetry Is Right for You" finds tenderness in love's sadness — ghosts pouring wine, a pulse under the skin. And Vievee Francis's "I've Been Thinking about Love Again" turns colder, sorting the world into those who give love freely and those predators - with talons - who only want to take it. Welcome to the pain of Season 2: Love, Unrequited.
Ask Your Doctor If Poetry Is Right for Youby Kelli Russell Agodon
It’s sad but not sad we love the darkness.Ghosts, who let you in? I sworeI locked the door. Even those who can’t touchdrink wine together as the moon risesin their individual glasses. Once I made a datethree years in advance — who lives so optimistically?I want a bottle of difficult love so when I pour it —the universe becomes a chalice of stars. It’s sad but not sad how our wrists are made of poetry.And when I touch the underside of life, I feelits pulse. And I hear it, in the whisper of words— the blood telling the bruise, I am here for you.
I’ve Been Thinking about Love Againby Vievee FrancisI’ve Been Thinking about Love AgainVievee FrancisThose who live to have it andthose who live to give it.Of course there are those for whom both are true,but never in the same measure.Those who have it to give arelike cardinals in the snow. So easyand beautifully lit. Someare rabbits. Hard to seeexcept for those who would prey upon them:all that softness and quaking and blood.Those who want itcannot be satisfied. Eagle-eyed and such talons,any furred thing will do. So easyto rip out a heart when it is throbbing so hard.I wander out into the winter.I know what I am.