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.
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,
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.