I feel I could be turned to ice
If this goes on, if this goes on.
I feel I could be buried twice
And still the death not yet be done.
I feel I could be turned to fire
If there can be no end to this.
I know within me such desire
No kiss could satisfy, no kiss.
I feel I could be turned to stone,
A solid block not carved at all,
Because I feel so much alone.
I could be grave-stone or a wall.
But better to be turned to earth
Where other things at least can grow.
I could be then a part of birth,
Passive, not knowing how to know.
He Asked About the Quality
C. P. Cavafy
From the office where he’d been taken on
to fill a position that was trivial and poorly paid
(eight pounds a month, including bonus) –
he emerged as soon as he’d finished the dreary tasks
that kept him bent over his desk all afternoon.
At seven he came out and began to stroll
slowly down the street. He was handsome
in an interesting way, with the look of a man
who had reached the peak of his sensual potential.
He’d turned twenty-nine a month before.
He dawdled along the street, then down
the shabby alleys that led to his apartment.
As he passed a little shop that sold cheap
imitation goods for workmen,
inside he saw a face, a physique
that urged him on, and in he walked,
inquiring about some coloured handkerchiefs.
He asked about the quality of the handkerchiefs
and what they cost; his voice
breaking, almost stifled by desire.
The answers came back in the same tone,
distracted, the low timbre
suggesting veiled consent.
They went on talking about the merchandise –
but their sole aim was for their hands to touch
over the handkerchiefs, for their faces,
their lips, as if by chance, to brush against each other:
for some momentary contact of the flesh.
Swiftly and in secret, so that the shop owner,
seated at the back, would never notice.
Trans. Avi Sharon
Guacamole
Kaddy Benyon
Avocados were somewhere on the lust-list
we made sated on the floor of room 404.
Write down, you said, write down every wicked
little dirty thing you’d like us to try. I pitted
the felt-tip against my teeth, then whispered:
I want you to carefully split a ripe avocado,
loosen its pip, scoop out the warm yellowy
flesh and squeeze it to a gentle pulp, then –
I stopped – back suddenly at my mother’s side,
eye-level with hip and kitchen top, glued to
her hands as she cuts and twists the wizened pears,
mashes in garlic, the devil-tailed chillies, a
splash of lime. Ravenous, open-mouthed, I crave
to lick the buttery mush between her fingers,
the jaded smear from her wrist, to suck her
wedding ring, to suck her wedding ring clean.
Daniel Craig: The Screensaver
Rich Goodson
… & when I fail to focus, when I tire,
he rises like a Christ newly baptised
in sky-blue trunks, reminding me desire
will always lie in wait & be disguised
as men with healing hands & cute-cruel lips
& arms I’d die for should they ever press
too hard against my throat.
When water drips
from him the fish swim to his feet, confess
how happily waylaid they are, congeal
in spasmic foil &, even then, mouth how
the breeding pools upstream are no big deal.
Before my eyes bake white like theirs I vow
I’ll hit a key. Before I go berserk
I’ll kill him with one finger. Wake up. Work.
Hypothetical
Maria Taylor
A friend of mine asked me if I’d sleep with Daniel Craig,
would I make love to him or kick him out of bed?
Before I have time to answer, I’m in bed with Daniel Craig.
He’s stirring out of sleep, smelling of Tobacco Vanille,
he flatters my performance, asks if I’d like coffee.
‘Hang on,’ I say, ‘I did not sleep with you, Daniel Craig,
this is just a conversational frolic.’ My friend stands
in the corner of my bedroom, ‘You’ve gone too far,’ she says.
I’m pulling the duvet away from his Hollywood body
at exactly the moment my husband enters the room.
I say, ‘Yes, this is exactly what it looks like, darling,
but it’s hypothetical, a mere conversational frolic.’
He’s threatening me. There are lawyers in the room.
My children begin to cry. I don’t even like Daniel Craig.
It’s too late. The sheets are full of secreted evidence.
There are forensics in the room, covering my body
in blue powder, checking my skin for finger prints:
they match Daniel Craig’s. He doesn’t even know
he’s slept with me. My marriage is a dead gull.
My neighbours come into the room shaking heads
oh dear oh dear oh dear. My husband has drawn lists
of all the things he wants to keep: a plasma screen,
an Xbox, a collection of muesli-coloured pebbles
from our holidays in Truro, ‘When you loved me!’
he snaps. My children will see a therapist after school.
Daniel Craig is naked in a hypothetical sense,
telling me we can make this work. My friend smirks
behind a celebrity magazine featuring lurid details
of our affair. There are photos. We are on a beach
in the Dominican Republic, healthy and tanned
both kicking sand at a playful Joan Collins.
‘I don’t even like Daniel Craig,’ I tell the ceiling.
Found Wanting
Rosie Sandler
When you find me wanting
is it because I cry
at children’s films –
how Bambi’s mother
always dies and E. T.
always goes home?
Or because I never know
which way is North
or why it matters –
losing myself
in the thrill of uncertainty?
Is it my wanton honesty,
my wilful ignorance
or how I scoff
at boundaries –
regarding hedgerows
and faux-pas
with equal equanimity?
Or maybe you don’t like
my singing, the way
my lungs squeeze
each note flat.
But know this:
I dream in perfect pitch –
your hands on my breasts
your lips on my thighs
my breath on your skin
my blood beating time with yours.
So, when you find me wanting,
do you suspect
that I’m wanting you
too much?
Young Men Dancing
Linda Chase
Who were those young men dancing?
And why were they dancing with you?
And what was the meaning of all that business
around the area of the pelvis, both pelvises,
I mean, since I saw you with two of them –
two men, that is, with one pelvis each.
Though there is your pelvis too, to reckon with.
It made quite a show of itself out there
on the dance floor. Not to be overlooked
nor slighted in any way, sticking like a magnet
to the erratic rhythms of those young men,
their jeans curving and cupping and making
promises in all directions of things to come.
Which way to go, you must have asked yourself
a dozen times at least, as the young man
with the smile turned this way, and the
young man with the dreamy eyes turned that,
and you were dazed, in circles, spinning
this way and that way, brushing up against them
in confusion, body parts in gentle friction
sliding back and forth, nearly seeming like
you hadn’t meant to do it.
Did you mean to do it?
Could they feel your nipples harden?
Did they know what must have happened
as your thighs began to stick together, throbbing
to the music? Thank God there was the music
you could hide behind and make it look like dancing.
I’m wondering just how much attention
young men pay.
Sandcastles
Richard Scott
A tall gent waits
inside the playground
not looking at any one child
but rather mostly
at the dog-dark door
of the public lavs
and the shadows
pooling within.
I wish I could enjoy
forging sandcastles with you
and your two-year-old,
filling the lime-green bucket,
packing it down
with the luminous shovel …
only now this man is
watching me –
he’s caught me
amongst the families,
caught me trying to play daddy.
His gaze is iron-heavy
as he walks
to the lavatory door,
pauses, like he were crossing a road,
then enters …
In one version of the poem I
follow him in, slide up next to the cistern.
He bolts the grimy cubicle door
behind us. Unzips my jeans.
In another I stay building with your daughter,
perfecting the castle’s keep, the last place to be breached
in a siege. In another I’m disgusted by these queers
who hang around toilets trying to catch my eye.
In another I am your husband – I yearn to leave
our daughter alone for just a handful of minutes –
she’d be fine out here – knowing there is more love
for me in there, with him.
In the last version I am your daughter,
sculpting the intricate castle from damp sand
pitted through with fag ends and gum –
oblivious to the men, the poem being written.
Remember, Body …
C. P. Cavafy
Body, remember not only how deeply you were loved,
not only the many beds where you lay,
but also those desires that flashed
openly in their eyes
or trembled in the voice – and were thwarted
by some chance impediment.
Now that all of them are locked away in the past,
it almost seems as if you surrendered
to even those pre-empted desires – how they flashed, remember,
in the eyes of those who looked at you, how they trembled
in the voice for you, remember, body.
Trans. Avi Sharon
Love & Sex & Boys in Showers
John Whitworth
Wishing, wondering, thinking, talking,
Is it Medicine? Is it Smarties?
Difficult, like tightrope walking?
Easy, like a broken heart is?
Where the sea along the shore moans,
Hear the humming of the hormones,
Messages of meeting, parting,
Is it worth the grief of starting?
Can the sweets outweigh the sours?
Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.
Suppose I let him go too far, but
Just how far is that precisely?
Suppose we do it in the car, but
After will he treat me nicely?
Everything I want’s illicit,
Adult, sexually explicit.
When he stuns me with his kisses,
Sweet as Sugar, bold as Bliss is,
Will I savour them for hours?
Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.
Steamy dreams of saltlick shoulders,
Peach-fuzz thighs and silky bottom.
Hearts have reasons. They’re as old as
Time. I swear I think I’ve got ’em.
Shy and shyer, fond and fonder,
There, where ocean meets blue yonder,
Skinnydips on desert island,
Wisechild wideness of his smile and
Lotus blossoms, passion flowers,
Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.
Princesses are racked and gloomy,
Fated, dated, triste and tragic.
Lose a few and draw a few – my
Life’s like football. Football’s magic.
Choose the time, the place, the weapons.
Everything we have is ours,
We’ve got paranormal powers,
Princesses are shut in towers,
Love & Sex & Boys in Showers.
Service
Gregory Woods
For all that he’s a sullen brute,
His pout is cute. In silhouette
The bursting of a rotten fruit,
It putters, muttering his fret,
Expressive though completely mute.
His lips could flay a clarinet,
His tongue electrocute a flute.
Worth challenging to a duet,
With fists like his he could transmute
A fight into a minuet,
A blunderbuss into a lute.
Within some squalid oubliette
He strips down to his birthday suit –
Tattoo and hand-rolled cigarette
The remnants of his ill-repute –
His nakedness no less a threat
Than uniformed in hot pursuit
Of somebody to shoot or pet,
More rigid than in full salute.
How could one get this dun cadet
To proffer if not prostitute
Himself; develop the coquette
Within the manly absolute?
I’d tempt him to forget regret,
That fetter to the dissolute;
To whet his appetite, I’d let
Him flatten me with his hirsute
Anatomy, the better yet
His persecution to refute;
I’d lick his feet (sweet etiquette!),
Recruit his sweat, and substitute
His carcan with a carcanet.
O Little One
Marilyn Hacker
O little one, this longing is the pits.
I’m horny as a timber wolf in heat.
Three times a night, I tangle up the sheet.
I seem to flirt with everything with tits:
Karyn at lunch, who knows I think she’s cute;
my ex, the DA on the Sex Crimes Squad;
Iva’s gnarled, canny New England god-
mother, who was my Saturday night date.
I’m trying to take things one at a time:
Situps at bedtime, less coffee, less meat,
more showers, till a remedy appears.
Since there’s already quite enough Sex Crime,
I think I ought to be kept off the street.
What are you doing for the next five years?
Troilism
Roddy Lumsden
I could mention X, locked naked
in the spare room by two so taken
with each other, they no longer needed him,
or Y who, with an erection in either hand,
said she felt like she was skiing,
or Z who woke in a hotel bed in a maze
of shattered champagne glass
between two hazy girls, his wallet light.
Me? I never tried it, though like many
I thought and thought about it
until a small moon rose above a harvest field,
which was satisfying, in its own way, enough.
Assurance
Emma Lazarus
Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss
Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed
Together in my dream, through some dim glade,
Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss.
The air was dank with dew, between the trees,
The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent.
Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze
Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went,
As sporting with our passion. Low and deep
Spake in mine ear her voice: ‘And didst thou dream,
This could be buried? This could be sleep?
And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem,
Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!’
Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.
Losing It to David Cassidy
Catherine Smith
That hot evening, all through our clumsy fuck,
David smiled down from the wall. His ironed hair,
American teeth. Eyes on me, his best girl.