The Poetry of Sex

by Hannah, Sophie

  Magnets

  Jo Bell

  Working different hours,

  we settled for exchanging rude words

  on the fridge.

  my purple love juice spit on roses:

  this member is a giant bore.

  I came alone into the tired house one night

  and reached for milk. I saw

  I in bed now

  come

  Muse

  Jo Bell

  You show up late

  in your biker jacket

  hoping that a quick roll

  on my laminate flooring

  will remedy all ills.

  It will. But make it

  a good one.

  The Day He Met His Wife

  Peter Sansom

  She said goodbye to common sense

  and so they booked a room

  in an afternoon hotel to holiday

  with fecklessness in laundered sheets;

  and there was an orchid

  and a crisp new paperback,

  the art gallery on a working day,

  a second bottle opened and a third

  knowing tomorrow in twenty years

  they’d wake up with such a head,

  a sink full of pots, the fridge

  empty as Antarctica

  and everything uphill again

  in rain you could canoe

  the middle of the street down,

  which they did.

  Conception

  Sarah Salway

  A winter night, his mouth on her breast

  so soft the spring inside her wound tight

  following the trail of it, his breath

  whispering she should open up, not fight,

  and she did, darling. She was one long

  ache, hard to see where she ended

  and he began. Then such strong

  aching, hard to see where she ends

  and the baby began. They become one long

  whisper, opening up without a fight,

  losing the trail of themselves, breath

  so real the spring inside winds tight

  feeling the shock of what’s happening

  this spring night, new mouth on her breast.

  After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

  Galway Kinnell

  For I can snore like a bullhorn

  or play loud music

  or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman

  and Fergus will only sink deeper

  into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash,

  but let there be that heavy breathing

  or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house

  and he will wrench himself awake

  and make for it on the run – as now, we lie together,

  after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies,

  familiar touch of the long-married,

  and he appears – in his baseball pajamas, it happens,

  the neck opening so small he has to screw them on –

  and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep,

  his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

  In the half darkness we look at each other

  and smile

  and touch arms across this little, startlingly muscled body –

  this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making,

  sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake,

  this blessing love gives again into our arms.

  Their Sex Life

  A. R. Ammons

  One failure on

  Top of another

  Featherlite

  Neil Rollinson

  Waste not, want not you say as you

  wring the last drops, the way

  you’d get the dregs of the Burgundy

  out of a wine box. You swallow the lot

  like an epicure, a woman who hasn’t drunk

  for weeks. I see the tongue curl

  in your mouth, your lips sticky and opalescent

  as it runs down your throat.

  An elixir, that’s what you call it,

  your multi-mineral and vitamin supplement:

  amino acids, glucose, fructose, vitamin B12

  (essential for vegetarians), vitamin C,

  magnesium, calcium, potassium,

  and one third of the recommended

  daily dose of zinc. You wipe your chin

  with a finger, and put the tip to your tongue.

  The taste is acquired; like whisky,

  and anchovies, you develop a passion.

  It’s an aphrodisiac more efficacious

  than rhino horn, or Spanish Fly,

  it’s delicious, you say, as you grab my hair,

  and push your salty tongue in my mouth.

  Casanever

  Nic Aubury

  To most men, the notion

  Of ‘romance and mystery’

  Means clearing the porn from

  Their Internet history.

  The Couple Upstairs

  Nic Aubury

  Their bed springs start to creak;

  Their ardour has awoken.

  That’s twice at least this week;

  Their telly must be broken.

  Putting in the Seed

  Robert Frost

  You come to fetch me from my work to-night

  When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see

  If I can leave off burying the white

  Soft petals fallen from the apple tree

  (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,

  Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea);

  And go along with you ere you lose sight

  Of what you came for and become like me,

  Slave to a Springtime passion for the earth.

  How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed

  On through the watching for that early birth

  When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

  The sturdy seedling with arched body comes

  Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

  And So Today Take Off My Wristwatch

  A. F. Harrold

  It has snowed and, not venturing out, it seems we must stay in,

  draw the curtains back and see the winter light reflecting in

  and stay in bed or share a bath and eat straight from the tin

  heedless of staining the duvet which has become a sort of skin.

  And with the thermostat turned up and with the wireless switched off

  we do simply simple things that we know we do not do enough

  and sometimes they have something to do with lofty things like love

  or passion, perhaps, or loyalty, but at other times do not.

  For sometimes it must be recognised that duties have stepped in

  and regulated each of the hours that we have stretched between

  dawn and breakfast, work and dinner and in time the heart wears thin.

  And so today take off my wristwatch, let me lie down, breathe you in.

  And in the silence between breathing some bird sings in the garden

  and once again certain things between us start to harden.

  An Epic in Me

  Eva Salzman

  So that the telling may not be diverse from the fact

  –Dante

  Sweating, his body becomes hot wax

  moulding me. I want my impression to last.

  The weight of him is a team of horses

  lumbering over a wooden bridge,

  shoving, shoving on the advance guard.

  Not quite bravery, but eloquent brawn.

  He runs whole pitches through the night.

  A hundred ‘tries’, he’s no closer to goal.

  Making his mark deep inside of me,

  he stitches the laces of a cross, a dash –

  he who loathes the intellectual.

  With him I felt sublimely
wordless. Until this.

  Ménage à Trois

  Neil Rollinson

  Insatiable these mornings, full

  of a drunk excitement, your eyes

  have the glazed look of a woman

  who hasn’t slept all night; you wake me

  with mouth open kisses, the smell

  of a different room in your clothes.

  You take off your dress and show me

  the stains on your skin

  like the trails of exotic gastropods;

  a body paint of semen

  which I rehydrate with my tongue.

  I trace the splash across your stomach

  and over your breast, a thick dried

  river of it, flooding again; your nipple

  rough with a smear of salt.

  That was one hell of a shot.

  I suck on you greedily and slide

  my tongue where his own tongue

  must have slid long into the night,

  and when all trace of him is gone,

  except the smell in your hair

  we make our own maps on each other’s skins

  and we fuck like we never do

  without this heat inside you, without

  this ghost of a man drifting between us

  like a lover sharing our bed.

  Intimacy

  Elizabeth Barrett

  Nineteen days without you when I woke,

  one morning, full with what I lacked;

  laid in the bath finding evidence

  of your absence and my neglect.

  I shaved my underarms and legs,

  plucked my eyebrows, shaped my pubes

  and used my tiny scissors to snip

  an errant hair. I paid attention again

  to detail; tried to look at my body

  the way you would − knowing

  that I would drive out, that day,

  to find you − that after our frantic urgency,

  or that slowed motion when (somehow)

  you trip it and we keep going on

  and on − knowing that, after this,

  you would examine every inch of me,

  your blue-gray eyes drunk with it,

  you rolling that one word around

  your mouth like a jelly bean: gorgeous,

  gorgeous. You’re so gorgeous …

  Later, you take my right breast

  between your teeth, skim your tongue

  across my nipple, ask: Where’s it gone?

  I miss it. There was just a single one.

  Embrace

  Rhian Gallagher

  Unshowered, wrestling with the sea still on our skin

  when she catches me, mid-room, with a kiss.

  Not a passing glance of lips, but her intended

  till I press back against the wall

  laughing, in a body-search pose

  as ready as her to forget about dinner.

  Once, in our first months, we headed down Christopher Street

  starch wafting from an open laundry, the sound of a press

  squeezing a line along a sleeve. We slipped

  across the West Side Highway, out on the pier

  pressing our faces to the fence to catch an air of sea,

  distant Liberty. Winter sun pouring its heart out

  over the Hudson, she stepped into me –

  the cold became a memory

  smudged under our winter coats.

  Two guys stood on the far side of the pier

  looking baffled, how long they’d been there

  god knows. Gulping, knees undone, we surfaced like swimmers

  and almost ran back up Christopher Street

  laughing. We’d been gone an hour, the night had come

  there were shelves of lights up and down the tall streets,

  she was all over me. Everything had turned on.

  Topography

  Sharon Olds

  After we flew across the country we

  got in bed, laid our bodies

  delicately together, like maps laid

  face to face, East to West, my

  San Francisco against your New York, your

  Fire Island against my Sonoma, my

  New Orleans deep in your Texas, your Idaho

  bright on my Great Lakes, my Kansas

  burning against your Kansas your Kansas

  burning against my Kansas, your Eastern

  Standard Time pressing into my

  Pacific Time, my Mountain Time

  beating against your Central Time, your

  sun rising swiftly from the right my

  sun rising swiftly from the left your

  moon rising slowly from the left my

  moon rising slowly from the right until

  all four bodies of the sky

  burn above us, sealing us together,

  all our cities twin cities,

  all our states united, one

  nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Like the Blowing of Birds’ Eggs

  Neil Rollinson

  I crack the shell

  on the bedstead and open it

  over your stomach. It runs

  to your navel and settles there

  like the stone of a sharon fruit.

  You ask me to gather it up

  and pour it over your breast

  without breaking the membrane.

  It swims in my palm, drools

  from the gaps in my fingers, fragrant,

  spotted with blood.

  It slips down your chest,

  moves on your skin like a woman

  hurrying in her yellow dress, the long

  transparent train dragging behind.

  It slides down your belly and into your

  pubic hair where you burst

  the yolk with a tap of your finger.

  It covers your cunt in a shock

  of gold. You tell me to eat,

  to feel the sticky glair on my tongue.

  I lick the folds of your sex, the coarse

  damp hairs, the slopes of your arse

  until you’re clean, and tense as a clock spring.

  I touch your spot and something inside you

  explodes like the blowing of birds’ eggs.

  5

  ‘BUT YOUR WIFE SAID SHE’

  The Faithful

  Dan Burt

  Will you reconnoitre after lunch,

  Alone, mobile in hand for an urban

  Nook from which to call where you

  Will not be seen or heard, masking

  Your aim like a jihadi, pleading

  Exercise rather than Asr prayers?

  If so, when you find a spot and press

  The green key will blue paper catch

  Sparking a blast across the sea?

  Muslim martyrs are no different,

  Dear, from you and me; sweet success

  Will shatter both our worlds,

  Though we may be more certain

  Than they what our desserts will be.

  The Sting

  Patience Agbabi

  At twelve I learnt about The Fall,

  had rough-cut daydreams based on original sin,

  nightmares about the swarm of thin-

  lipped, foul-mouthed, crab apple-

  masticating girls who’d chase me full

  throttle: me, slipping on wet leaves, a heroine

  in a black-and-white cliché; them, buzzing on nicotine

  and the sap of French kisses. I hated big school

  but even more, I hated the lurid shame

  of surrender, the yellow miniskirt

  my mother wore the day that that man

  drove my dad’s car to collect me. She called my name

  softly, more seductive than an advert.

  I heard the drone of the engine, turned and ran.

  In the Victoria Hotel

  John Saunders

  I undress your innocence,<
br />
  watched by the apostle of temperance

  you kiss my lips, whisper – this is us.

  We make love in the company of guilt,

  shelter weakness in our hearts,

  give safety to dangerous thoughts

  and throw them to the pool of fate.

  I believe every story it suggests,

  dine on fine wines and purple dust.

  This is the memory of our fading space,

  a threadbare blanket of feeling –

  every choice we make, a loss of freedom.

  We dance in time to waltzes and tangos,

  capture our history in mirrors of gold.

  ‘For each ecstatic instant’

  Emily Dickinson

  For each ecstatic instant

  We must an anguish pay

  In keen and quivering ratio

  To the ecstasy.

  For each beloved hour

  Sharp pittances of years,

  Bitter contested farthings

  And coffers heaped with tears.

  ‘Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short’

  Gaius Petronius

  Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

  And done, we straight repent us of the sport:

  Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,

  Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

  For lust will languish, and that heat decay.

  But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

  Let us together closely lie and kiss,

  There is no labour, nor no shame in this;

  This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never

  Can this decay, but is beginning ever.