Phantom Hue (PB) (2026)

Blending dream dialogue, personal reflection, and historical imaginings, poet Schyler Butler explores how intimacy and love take shape under the white gaze.

This stunning debut asks what remains of intimacy when the quiet terror of white supremacy shapes every touch, silence, and room. Through a fiercely confessional voice, Phantom Hue traces the inner life of a light-skinned Black woman reckoning with the inheritances of race, gender, history, and family. From colorism to the uneasy desire of interracial love, each poem strips away performance to expose raw truth. Rooted in the personal yet bound to the political, Butler's lyricism and intellect pulse through a collection that grieves and praises, confesses and conjures--a luminous reckoning with what it means to live, and love, inside a haunted body.