The Poetry of Sex Read Online Free PDF Page A

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