“I transform a little more each time I read the words in this Anthology. I come a little more undone through each curve, crevice, brushstroke, and intentional line I see, deeply, through the included artworks.

It is my Sensualist who becomes as I transform, though. It is my Sensualist who embodies as I come undone.

So, who are you as The Sensualist, before you peruse this Issue, throughout your perusal, and after you’ve let the art make you a new being?”

“Being a sensualist meant realizing that my body grew flowers because being sensual required so much toiling of the soil, watering with arousal of thought and actions, and deep prayer for the orgasmic joy of watching your flowers bloom.”

“What pulses at the center—what beats in the heart of The Sensualist—is the desire to co-create with the universe. To not only be a receiver, but a defender of our own sensations. To manifest our deepest truths by submitting to our shadows, our unconscious desires, and letting them roam free.”

“The night is stripped bare,

and so are we,

wrapped in the hush of unseen hands,

in the flicker of something ancient,

something unspoken,

something more honest than sound.”

“We are a pair of silences

searching for echoes in touch,

weaving wounds into the hush of skin,

erasing memory with a slow caress,

dissolving the space between you and me.”

“On last year’s anniversary, as he’d held me, I’d whispered all the things that set my skin on fire when I thought of him. How that part of me that I had buried and forgotten about was awakened, and she wouldn’t rest. How I wanted us to go deeper, into the corners of our minds that didn’t need to make sense.”

“I didn't want anyone to see themselves too explicitly within this piece. There's a bit of distortion with the faces and features for this reason. To me this painting about about a one-sided connection, unknown to the first party. There is safety between these two, but it's more about the ways an individual’s own struggles can create distance within a relationship between two people.”

“/ Use me / I’ll wax and wane under the tides of your need, my flame will be drawn to your breath, and you’ll eventually learn to yearn for me /”

“…and silence

sits in the shadows of my mouth, pools

in the places your tongue occupies

on occasion, watches as you steal my speech

and I surrender.”

“Never, I realized, would I stand as firm as the thick wooden cello. A man who cradles an instrument is not made to cradle a woman. I swore I would never allow myself to be taken by an artist again.”

“because perfection of the gentle gaze

is beheld in the waxed layers

upon layers,

            upon warmth, upon touch,

  upon layers of revision — of love”

“Sensuality, often misunderstood or confined to the physical, becomes a force of deep presence, self-awareness, and liberation in this body of work.”

“I learned of Lucy, Betsy, and Anarcha

and I feel called to cause anarchy—

break out of the patriarchy’s carnivorous cage—

let all beef get smoked

by Black feminine rage. “

“It is about my relationship between sensuality and self-sovereignty. It is an intimate reclamation of my body—not just as flesh, but as an extension of spirit, thought, and emotion.”

options both limited & boundless.

legacies of sin beauty is blamed for, which

beauty must harness or perish—an eternal test—

so use the body

when you are told you have nothing else.

your only asset. your only worth.

“Protected depicts a figure resting vulnerably beside a powerful white tiger. It holds both softness and strength in quiet harmony, emphasizing that true protection is both fierce and tender.”

“And for a minute there I think this is the freest I’ve seen my mother in a long time. Smiling. Laughing. Dancing. Giving God all the glory when she throws her hands up in the air and two steps like the movement in her hips had thawed and all life had been blown back into them.”

“As the wind

Gently caresses

Its hands

Over my soft breasts

A surge of femininity

Gushes through my veins”

“I summon forth She who lies in the shadow—

sharp salvation, sweet salivation

my sultry, my silly, my sensual

in Her every skin, she summons me

crawling on all fours…”

“Marinating in this divine chalice of magic and mystery, I shuddered in gratitude.”