Luther Hughes
We’ve loved sharing poetry this month with Issue 9, and we’re closing out the month with two stunning poems from Luther Hughes. After reading Hughes’s collection, A Shiver in the Leaves, I was enthralled by their ability to convey complex relational dynamics so lyrically. These two poems bring abundant insight into the speakers’ lives. In “Ekphrasis,” things between three men on a Grecian urn get spicy. The speaker of “Nocturne” cooks dinner, and the memory of someone important wells into the room. These poems are tender and alive—what better way to send off our first poetry issue.
-Michael
Ekphrasis
Homosexual Love Gay Sex Ancient Greece Vase kylix Greek Pottery Ceramic
There are three men, all of which are naked and erect.
Two of them—bearded—are holding the one—shaven face—
on either end, a table beneath with a cloth draped over.
As the title says: vase, ancient and Greek, pottery, ceramic.
The art has a black base and the details, the men, the words,
and the table are clay orange. The vase has two handles on the side.
On the phone, I tell my lover that D. is all in my business.
It’s late. I haven’t had enough to drink, but D. tells me
he’s heard I was a good kisser. My mouth beelines into a smile.
He keeps flirting with me, I tell my lover, and he says
he’ll call me back. I wanna find out, D. says
and T. is standing behind him now—D. is on the floor,
hands feline into the carpet in front of me. T. grabs
D.’s head and tells him to shut up with his erection.
In the dark, I can’t tell where T. begins and D. ends.
I want to say something here, reader, about the evangelical
way desire positions itself inside my body, but I must
continue the story. I must give the story its due.
My lover doesn’t call me back as I watch T. and D.
sliver into the back bedroom. We’re at T.’s apartment.
This morning, I watched a video of Chloe and Halle
eat their cover of Beyonce’s “Best Thing I Never Had”
while eating a PB&J sandwich, waiting for T.
to get out the shower and drive us to the Southend
for another day of his wasp-shit schedule—
wash, rinse, repeat. Once, T. asked my lover why he doesn’t
wife me, and my love says he doesn’t know.
Once, when everyone else slinkied down to the corner store
for Hot Cheetos and Arizona Tea, I slammed my lover
on T.’s bedroom floor until his tongue married my name.
Which is where I find myself now, except at the doorway
watching D. wolf down what he can of T.’s distraction.
T. tells me to come in or maybe that’s what I’m telling myself
as D. removes himself from T. and kisses me.
I take off my clothes. They, theirs. And it’s not so dark anymore.
But forgive me, reader, this is where it bleeds together.
I enter D.’s mouth perfectly or T. enters my mouth
or I enter D. or T. enters me or I climb on top of T.
as D. memorizes my mouth or I memorize D.’s neck
while T. makes a map of my back or I map
the inside of D.’s inside watching God sluice T.’s mouth,
but, reader, I mean to say we were a beautiful vase:
handles, openings, blackness, clay—desire is an ancient art.
What is to come of the lion who refuses the whine of its belly?
What happens to the American robin when it can’t sing against dawn?
I mean to say, let your desire have its song. I mean to say,
when the world around you is chips, rumors, corner stores,
YouTube videos, Beyoncé, friends, darkness, phone calls,
shadows, bedrooms, peanut butter, erections, mouths—
don’t forget the beauty of being human. I mean to say,
you are beautiful. I mean to say, live.
Nocturne
My fiancé is whipping up a pot of yakamein
while our dog makes a mess of her meal.
The dining table is cluttered with the week’s mail,
and a vase of lilies, hydrangeas, and roses
fancies the occasion. It’s quieter
than it has ever been. The sky has done
what skies do, and the smell of rain smears
across the city. I keep imagining you
in the kitchen hovering behind him
as you often did those days you stayed with us,
the disease already throwing up its feet
on the table inside you. You were too short
to see over his shoulder; you stood on tippy toes—
You sure you know what you’re doing,
you’d interrogate every few minutes.
The last time he cooked, he made
cinnamon mac-n-cheese, you told him,
and the two of you casted your heads back
with laughter as the smell of gumbo lapped
the apartment. You kept trying to get us
to watch the commercial where the baby
bobs up and down, showing his no-longer full diaper.
His mother’s hazed smile in the distance.
As we sat over dinner—This is good, okay,
you know what’s what, you praised—
the room got a little brighter as it does
now as I watch him sample his creation
after blowing away the heat eyes closed.
You once said that we’re all God’s creations.
Nothing and nobody more special than the next.
The goldfish I accidentally tanked as a child.
The pigeon downtown searching for its next treat.
The large fir trees that once adorned our backyard.
We’re all creations, you’d say, ending
with a kiss on my cheek, your warm hands
cradling my head. I study the love your love
has fashioned and remember that it never leaves;
it becomes a new taste over time. The food is done,
he beams. You kiss him on the cheek, I imagine,
and dinner is set before us.
Luther Hughes (they/them) is the author of A Shiver in the Leaves (BOA Editions, 2022), listed as best books of 2022 in The New Yorker, and the chapbook, Touched (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018), recommended by the American Library Association. They are the founder of Shade Literary Arts, an organization for queer writers of color, and cohosts The Poet Salon Podcast with Gabrielle Bates and Dujie Tahat. Recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Rosenberg Fellowship and the 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize, they received their MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. Their writing has been published in The Paris Review, Orion, American Poetry Review, and others. They’ve been featured in The Seattle Times, Forbes, Essence, KUOW Public Radio, The Slowdown, and more. Luther lives in Seattle, where they were born and raised.
Follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and check out more of their work here.