Here’s your annual V Day Triple Sonnet from yours truly, Editor-in-Chief Dorothy Chan.

“This myth, like everything // else in the realm of love, can be stripped down to the vulnerable.”

Our Valentine’s Day issue opens with this moving poem by Gustavo Hernandez.

“The old queen / would leave the hive whenever she wanted to // without being followed by a swarm”

We move into the “Hypocenter” in this trio of poems.

For the past decade on every valentines day, I made a set of six cards around my interpretation of what I think Muslim Valentines Day should celebrate.

…Because Drake has always been a bitch.

Here’s the one-and-only Kendra Allen with a rant that encapsulates why this category was created.

“In our pursuit of the fruit // we’d take the form of matter and myth – let time be / swallowed by the light, order by chaos, conviction”

Oh gosh, time for three stunners by Michael Sun:

“this is her bibimbap /

she has two languages to say I love you / “

haibun / time / nonlinear / love

“I hunger. I eat. I sleep.

I hunger. I eat. I sleep.”

Be ready to be entranced.

“The following piece records and explores the experiences of black women I interviewed in 2022, my own experiences as a black woman, and the thoughts and research that arose throughout the project. The women quoted here have never met.”

“My father, like many fathers, believed that men don’t cry.”

“Unlike my father I cry regularly. “

Honey Literary loves dear Addie, and we love honoring our animals.

“We mirror each other like pages of a book.”

The Hive welcomes the amazing Tiffany Babb back!

“That summer, I was rejected in every white man’s journal, / and I felt bad for my poems, my children, / when I couldn’t build them a home.”

“Maybe disruption was not a flaw of the greater world, but a characteristic of all people, even lesbians. Maybe there could be joy in chaos and boldness.”

We are in love with this dynamic comic by Paula Molina Acosta.

Do you get a more fire title than this? I think not.

“…tell me I’m headed that way.”

Here is the dream. Here is the truth. Let’s sashay and come out on top, into this must-read by Shira Haus.

for centuries, I have lived
innumerable songs

died the most humiliating deaths
became a nation’s lullaby…

If the sun shines on all the same, then let me bask.
I’ve used up every matchbox to light the ocean, trailed
a thousand rivers to and from. Did you know…

Saida Agostini’s let the dead in is a marvel; a monument to stubborn love, to a healing community, and to fat black girls everywhere, this book thrives because of the care and introspection Agostini brings to her work.