[Portraits of Love cover]

Introduction: Portraits of Love

By Susan Fox Rogers and Linda Smukler

I. May 26, 1996: Memorial Day

Susan: Shall we write our introduction? We've done just about everything else together.

Linda: I love your fingernail skin and the back of your knuckles it astounds me that you are willing to go along with it except that we were supposed to go on a hike today we planted roses instead then it got too late and I had reservations so instead we are sitting here and writing for this book now what?

Susan: We should go far a walk, of course. A walk up a mountain, a walk down the street, a walk in the park. Hand in hand, arm in arm, we do this so easily, unself-consciously in these odd little towns near where we call home.

Linda: Up and down the streets of Chatham then through the herb fair could so many heterosexuals exist in the same place at the same time? don't think so and yet it's where our home happens to be and then again we learned about bedstraw and cattail flour

II. June 15, 1996

Linda: Imagine round baby cat I put that on the refrigerator a month ago and now there are two round baby cats jumping around the living room I now love the color of our refrigerator mustard-yellow or according to G.E. Harvest Gold

Susan: You asked me the color of that refrigerator when you know that I am color -- not blind -- but indifferent. You are the one who wanted blue tiles on the kitchen counter top. But you could not live with that kitchen. I could not live without baby cats.

Linda: The round baby cats have taken to sleeping with the German shepherd tiny tiny and big blue mustard Sahara a June garden of columbine red purple burgundy pink clematis deep red and neon pink roses and now the ice cream cone peonies of pale pale yellow and pink lots of pink

Susan: You have just told me that Max cat is deformed. Eight toes is not deformed, eight is just enough. I have always wanted a very large cat with many toes and long hair. I have always loved what is odd. Maybe that is why I love you. You write of flowers and lushness and I think: how different this would have been if we had written this in the winter. This winter was so deep and white and silent, inside and out. I love the changes and the faith that comes with them.

Linda: In this collection we wanted to see what would happen given the co-existence in a short piece of two voices -- not two voices from the same author -- but voices from two distinct authors with some deep relation to each other I have always been fascinated by the closely examined object by what happens when the writer turns her sight onto a specific object in this case a lover a loved person an animal

Susan: We didn't, however, want to privilege couples -- after all, we've all been single at some point, and some probably want to stay that way forever. So for those who have loved but don't have a partner or a lover who wanted to collaborate, we received poems, stories, musings. So we offer here some co-voiced objects experimental and not, a few solo ventures, some poems of love, not-love that we love. Our hope is that readers will delight in these, find a collaged portrait of what lesbian love is and might be.

Linda Smukler and Susan Fox Rogers met in Chicago on June 2, 1995, riding the subway on the way to the Lambda Literary Awards. They both had books nominated for the award, but neither of them won. An award, that is.

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