West Trade Review Online Exclusive: "Proem, After Langston Hughes" by Ahrend Torrey

Ahrend Torrey

Image by Ana Cruz on Unsplash

Ahrend Torrey enjoys exploring nature in southern Louisiana where he lives with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl, their cat. He earned his MA and MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is the author of “Small Blue Harbor” published by the Poetry Box Select imprint (Portland) in 2019. His work is forthcoming or has been published in The Westchester Review, The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine) and the Greensboro Review, among others. His poetic influences include Anne Sexton, Etheridge Knight, Jack Gilbert, James Wright, Jane Kenyon, Jim Harrison, Langston Hughes, Li-Young Lee, Mary Oliver, and Walt Whitman.

Proem, After Langston Hughes

I am a Homo:

Curved as the rainbow is curved.

Curved like the bend of my genital.

I’ve been a target:

The church calls me an abomination.

I was handcuffed at Stonewall Inn.

I’ve been a soldier:

From my scars dissolved the confederate.

From my hands bled liberty for all.

I’ve been a writer:

All the way from the far east to the west

I withheld my sexuality.

I wrote Leaves of Grass.

I’ve been a victim:

The Spanish burned me in San Lázaro.

They beat me still in Mississippi.

I am a Homo:

Curved as the rainbow is curved.

Curved like the bend of my genital.

* Written after “Proem” (the prologue poem of "The Weary Blues") by Langston Hughes

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