Volume 118 Winter/Spring 2024 Guest Editor’s Note
Folio: Love Poems by Queer Writers
I’ve been having trouble starting this introduction. I want to say something about the importance of giving queer people the space to explore love in all its capacities. Be it intimate love. Be it platonic love. Be it the love of a fresh baked cookie. It’s important. Don’t get me wrong. What does it mean, then, that I have to name this importance when so many laws have been revoked, passed, and under review that directly affects us? What does it mean that I can’t simply say, “Here, read some love poems by some amazing queer writers?” Am I trying to prove anything by knowing this folio is important? I’m not sure. But, if nothing else, if nothing above is the reason for this folio, here’s one: poetry has the capability to remind us of what it means to be human. To love, yes, but to also drink some water. To reimagine a bird. To go back in time. In “Treatment Plan” by Brittany Rogers, we’re reminded to love our bodies inside and out. Reading “Nymphea” by Jim Whiteside, I’m reminded that memory is fickle, intentional, and when the time is right, so very beautiful. “& don’t forget my plantain—they look so cheerful / shimmering in the hot oil,” writes Zain Murdock in “Your Plantain Will Taste Sweeter If You Serenade Them.”
The poems in this folio don’t ask to be challenged with any of the questions I initially posed, but they still answer them. Unfortunately for us queers, it’s not enough simply to exist, but we have to make do of our lives. We must move this world ever grateful and always aware. A kiss on the cheek can never just be a kiss. To bite into a juicy plum must take on new characteristics. Oh, but my dear friends, that doesn’t mean we can’t also revel in this type of love, too. We, too, can want something more than the mundane. We, too, can shine. We, too, deserve all this world has to offer us, owes us. To love intimately, with our entire being—now, that is beautiful. And sometimes, this time, in these poems, being beautiful is just enough.
—Luther “Lue” Hughes
Luther “Lue” Hughes is the author of the debut poetry collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, (BOA Editions), listed as best books of 2022 in The New Yorker, and the chapbook Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018), recommended by the American Library Association. She is the founder of Shade Literary Arts, a literary platform for queer writers of color, and co-hosts The Poet Salon podcast with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat. Her honors include the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Rosenberg Fellowship, the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, Cascade PBS’s Black Arts Legacies honoree, and named Most Influential by Seattle Magazine. Her writing has been published in The Paris Review, Orion, American Poetry Review, and others. She’s been featured in The Seattle Times, Forbes, Essence, KUOW Public Radio, The Slowdown, and more. Lue lives in Seattle where she was born and raised.
To purchase Volume 118 Winter/Spring 2024 featuring Lue’s guest edited folio, click here.
