Mildly Erotic Verse

  11th July 1610

  Her husband’s statement

  is a blackened growl of grudged restraint, a tamping down of what would be invective if the form had given room, if the Magister had asked for more than fact, more than witnesses had proffered as they lined to spew their sordids into village rumour pots. Her husband’s statement tells he found their letters (the shame), had them followed (the scandal), offered battle for his name (the honour), turned down money for his wife (the strumpet), would not countenance divorce (the defeat). Her husband’s statement spikes the good brown paper with each ink jab, though why the scribe is angered by dictation lies unrecorded. Her husband never learned to read or write, guessed instead their letters meant no good, hidden as they were inside the corn crock, smeared by too much touching, her round, white body heat, the smell of inner thigh when she wore them like a trophy beneath her skirts.

  JACQUELINE SAPHRA

  The Frozen Man

  At the cusp of the year in absolute dark

  she calls his name. She catches

  scatters of him in the soft cup of her hands

  until he is too much to hold. He falls

  and falls, until he covers the bed.

  Slowly, she breathes him into warmth,

  her pink tongue patient against

  his white-blue beauty,

  her body moulding him,

  her legs embracing him.

  She knows his coldness will not keep;

  before the spring, he will melt

  complete from her hands.

  CAMILLE RALPHS

  Yours truly, Stephen Dedalus

  …the long foul letters he had written in the joy of guilty

  confession and carried secretly for days and days…

  James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

  Another naked Sunday here is pillowed

  on a sigh. Here lies the idea of your soft knot

  of knee, that thigh honeyed in light and blazing

  on the bed; here lies this beating fist. Here,

  lies. And saturated in your gasp even on this

  a dry night, the sky rolling away like the white

  of your eyes… I’ve felt your body shimmer

  on my skin like dawn

  on a waterlogged meadow, your hot breath

  floating freckles from my cheek. Or I have

  dreamt it, and felt so, so sorry. I fear I maybe

  loved it more than God.

  And but forgive me – me and every cowson

  just like me and every scarf of kisses I knit

  nightly for your neck (you mustn’t know this).

  I am wanting. But forgive. For if I could,

  I’d fumblemouth your name into absurdity

  with love of saying it. I’d serve, turn over

  more hours in learning your face than if

  these hands were clock-hands.

  But throw this in the fire. Too much said, too

  much turmoiled in blood. And much too young.

  I Matthew 19:4. I hate to love you more. I beg

  you don’t reread this.

  KIRSTEN IRVING

  The Student

  It’s 7am in the park. You’re pretending

  you don’t see the grime-chested kendo student

  drilling, hakama stretched into a theatre,

  bokken now passing like a wing before him.

  His forearms and fingers are lean, and you’re feeling

  his weight on your own and his hands on your wrists.

  He brings down the sword with a shift of his hips.

  Advances, quite cat-like, fresh sweat on a forelock.

  Tonight you’ll draw ronin in hicho like herons.

  Tonight you’ll be dreaming of jostling red fish.

  KELLEY SWAIN

  Helen of Troy in the Bath

  There’s an old claw-foot, blue, with brass taps.

  The handles fall off when I turn them.

  But enough hot water to shame a mortal in this age of austerity.

  I add bubbles.

  I like my wine almost black, tasting of ashes,

  a cremation of grapes.

  Disrobing, I slide in. Flush pink, hands and feet screaming.

  Why the British keep their homes so cold, I’ll never understand.

  Your climate fosters a morbid disposition.

  Melancholia. Poetry.

  ‘Fathomed’. It’s a good word.

  Though when it comes down to the act,

  a woman wants to be made love to, or fucked.

  I run my hands over my breasts, fathoming.

  It’s the sort of tub for fathoms.

  Conjuring forty toy ships, I let them float.

  They’ll founder near the islands of my thighs.

  Perhaps every man yearns to be Odysseus.

  Then despite it all, his marriage wouldn’t run aground.

  The tap chokes. What is it we wish to comprehend?

  Love? Everyone always writes and rewrites

  the story of my mother. We can see there’s enough lust

  to go around, but not where one needs it.

  For heaven’s sake, my ancestors were screwing geese.

  Swans.

  Tell Mephistopheles I’ll magick my own illusions:

  like these ships, listing in my coils of hair –

  and all those tiny souls on board.

  I take up a razor, warm it in the hot water.

  Sometimes it’s pinfeathers the blade scrapes

  from my legs and underarms. Don’t tell.

  I’d say they’re white as snow, but I could be lying.

  The wine, the bubbles, make me giddy:

  I’ll pull the plug, watch my forty ships

  spiral, and spiral,

  and spiral down the drain.

  ANJA KONIG

  Radiocarbon Dating

  It’s no longer done,

  comparing a woman’s body to a landscape –

  buttock hillocks, dales and deltas –

  politically incorrect. But I want you

  in charge of manning up an expedition to undefined

  white spaces on my map. I want you

  to use your scientific training, evaluate

  my forestation, measure the circumference of both

  polar caps. You can examine drilling cores

  to reconstruct my seismic history. The positions

  of tectonic faults, degree of liquefaction

  of the crust and mantle imply

  tremors are possible and could be more

  than model settlements can handle.

  You can still shift your paradigm, embrace

  a post-colonial sentiment and keep your footprint light.

  LAWRENCE SCHIMEL

  Fairy Tale

  Lying naked atop the sheets in the summer heat

  his lumpy genitals press against his crotch

  like a frog crouched

  in the thick reeds of dark pubic hair.

  ‘Kiss me,’ they whisper

  ‘and I shall grow into a prince.’

  ANNIE BRECHIN

  The best lovers

  don’t want to marry, they don’t want children

  or to settle down. They lay you

  on a mattress in a room full of mirrors

  and turn the switch to pitch black.

  They drive you to an orange grove

  in October. They leave faint

  blossom on your skin.

  Years later you will see their photographs

  in exhibitions and remember

  how the midday fell through their skylight,

  how they brewed you fresh coffee,

  how your fingers tore

  their sheet apart and your back

  arched like a question mark.

  SARA-MAE TUSON

  the jackal and the moon

  give me your hand, he says,

  jonquil eyes suspended by drink;

  tightrope quick,
he lurches towards

  the doom of her red lips.

  she smiles, unfurling her tiny paw,

  with an arch look asks:

  will you read it?

  smacking her lips suggestively

  like a jackal inhaling the steam

  from the entrails of a kill

  on a cold night.

  I see a hand, he intones,

  beginning the assault

  with a flick of his tongue

  in the centre of her palm.

  a soft hand...

  softer than other hands?

  she is very dangerous in this light,

  the cool, white sheen of her cheeks glowing.

  no better, he says. no worse.

  and your eyes...

  no better? she waits,

  breath bated.

  your left eye being somewhat higher, perhaps...

  he considers, head tipped with whimsy.

  her eyebrows bristle,

  flecks of gold ignite in her eyes.

  your neck...

  she clasps it protectively,

  the five jewels of her fingertips

  flexing possessively.

  ... as much like a neck as I have ever seen.

  she hardens her heart, snaps

  who do you think you are?

  her white teeth cracking together,

  a movie clapboard

  proclaiming: The End!

  she begins to turn away, hungry for other meat.

  oh, but Biatista, he squeezes her palm.

  I could make you howl

  against the blood-soaked moon,

  till the juices of our bodies overran ourselves.

  if you smashed yourself against me,

  I’d strip you like a taxidermist

  strips a dead animal,

  till the you you were was a husk

  and the you you are is coated in musk,

  thick as peanut butter,

  straight from the jar...

  what’s the matter with you?

  don’t you know how to talk to a lady?

  her arch twang inhabits curiosity like an old fur coat,

  as she purrs along his neckline, watching his pulse.

  he thinks of how he’d like to bite

  the virgin flesh of her clavicle,

  sink his teeth into soft skin,

  worrying at her woman’s bones.

  oh Biatista, you know I never lie,

  your eye is an eye.

  your hair, like hair anywhere.

  but come with me

  and we’ll be good together,

  that I guarantee.

  Biatista gave a smile

  which cut through his ribs

  like a prison shiv,

  curled up her claws and...

  came to him.

  and the night was a night,

  and the moon was a moon as bright

  as the moon is wont to be,

  and that’s alright,

  that’s just as it should be.

  ANGELA KIRBY

  Maine Man

  Your shoulders are smooth

  as the cool water of Long Pond

  when we swam there last summer,

  slippery beneath my fingers

  like that solitary boulder

  which you told me was erotic,

  and since then I have liked to think

  of it squatting there beside the lake,

  alone but sure of itself and proud

  of its sex appeal – so why tell me now,

  amongst so many other things

  I would rather not know,

  that you’d really said erratic?

  JO BRANDON

  Down the Aisle

  As the gold band slid over,

  her vena amoris throbbed.

  Each throb was a naked limb,

  a flaunting of ceremony –

  even as her finger became a full stomach

  against a slender girdle,

  delicious thoughts roared through her blood,

  a euphemism

  for where they really made noise.

  The ring tightened – each urge

  made her finger swell, the vein

  protruded, a hernia of desire, a violaceous pulsing

  that stripped even the priest of his senses.

  Congregation was not divided by bride and groom

  but by those who recognised her ailment

  and those who pretended they did not.

  HILAIRE

  Bananaphagy

  He peels the skin part way back –

  three flaps drooping

  like a luscious tropical flower

  trumpeting its stamen.

  She skins the thing completely –

  no messing, just brute exposure

  of the fruit, holding it bare

  in her fingers, a squidgy boomerang.

  The dirty deed itself is done

  behind each other’s backs. Some acts

  are best imagined. The greedy gobble,

  the slo-mo chewing down to pulp.

  Their afterglow – a pair of empty sacks,

  bedding down together, making sweet compost.

  RUTH STACEY

  Come With Me

  After, sloth-like with satisfaction,

  bed covers on the floor and panting,

  we smile and ask: where were you?

  Versailles: gold bed posts with raspberry

  corset and cloud-white stocking ruffles,

  you were a rakish courtier – and you?

  Victorian attic: iron bed frame,

  eager water flicking the window pane,

  you were the sharp-eyed maid – and you?

  Yurt: thick with clinging incense, the sound

  of ponies stamping, bows and arrows,

  you were a bold, fierce warrior – and you?

  Japanese garden: bright running stream,

  maple leaves falling, painted skin,

  you were the Geisha kneeling – and you?

  Mountain air: fir trees and snow peaks,

  creak of leather boots and eagle shriek,

  you the lone-wolf in a cabin – and you?

  JAMIE BAXTER

  Casserole

  As if you wouldn’t feature in every one

  of my slow-baked plans – you conspicuous

  as parakeets that fill my north/south sky

  in flocks of hopeful green.

  I wouldn’t eat your casserole unless

  you said to. You wear dark green on lightest

  pink, autumnal scarves. Let’s disappear

  in Wiltshire – you’ll put those socks on

  and I’ll take them off. I think maybe

  it is the mascara, but then again no –

  leaves turn you rich with gifted colours.

  Out walking then home ‘to read’, I’ll pop

  your wellies off like corks. You put enough

  wood in the burner to last us all night.

  KRISTEN ROBERTS

  Cool change before midnight

  At ten we open the windows

  and the cool air rolls in like a tide,

  soothes the heat-sullen rooms

  and settles the kids

  in their sheet-tangled thrashing.

  We shower in darkness

  as though light itself holds warmth,

  the water dancing on our skin

  as the sour graffiti of the day streams away

  and the relief of night unfurls.

  Naked we run through the house,

  flick our hair at each other

  and feel the startling kiss of droplets

  on flesh that’s too seldom bare,

  and trace their sliding trails with our tongues

  under the pale eye of the moon.

  MEL DENHAM

  To September, from June

  I am already mythologising.

  Maybe that’s why I invoke a Greek hero’s quest

&n
bsp; as we descend the steep stairs

  to a Smith Street streaked with late-night rain

  In your version of heaven you live in a caravan by the sea

  In mine there’s a city apartment

  a decorous distance from your

  untrustworthy hands

  We would meet

  but not too often

  having had plenty of practice caressing

  the palpable texture of absence

  In my dim-lit room cluttered

  with books I would taste

  salt on your lips

  On your sheets we’d dishevelled

  within earshot of the moan and sigh

  of waves you’d bury

  your face in my hair’s faint

  car-exhaust scent

  Don’t let me get too old you say as if

  I can stop time like you

  kill speech when you put your mouth to mine – Oh

  loosen the tongues of my mute body

  In place of that paradise on which the sun may never rise

  know this instead:

  tonight when your familiar voice

  speaks and your familiar hand

  moves

  it’s a present

  pleasure I can’t grasp to keep

  my own hand

  table-bound and calm

  the clamour from my – take me – traitorous heart.

  RUTH WIGGINS

  Birch

  Prostrate birch –

  what’s with all the reaching?

  So keen for something

  that you can’t get straight.

  You lean. Invite me to

  saddle up. Strong-backed

  you speak to me

  in mushroom and lichen.

  Go on,

  green my tongue.