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.
Mildly Erotic Verse Page 3