The Poetry of Sex Read Online Free PDF

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