Sex is obviously awesome. So awesome, that books, films, photographs, art and websites have dedicated pages and reels and canvases and HTML to the act. And me personally? I love a good, steamy romance poem. A poem that conveys the act of sex without making me feel like I am being subjected to a lusty 13 year-old boy’s inner thoughts. A poem that really, really gets what being in love and lust is like. A poem that knows the feeling of insatiable want and desire. A poem that’s not afraid of being brash, gusty, and a little graphic.
Sex poems have existed since the dawn of time. For example, during my undergrad, I learned that the ancient Egyptians were super frisky. Are you ready for a sexy Egyptian poem that is thousands of years old? I know you are:
My heart desires to go down to bathe myself before you, That I may show you my beauty in a tunic of the finest royal linen… I’ll go down to the water with you, and come out to you carrying a red fish, which is just right in my fingers. (Translated by Michael Fox).
So much going down! So much water! And that “red fish”? Guess what that’s a metaphor for? A penis.
Since I think we can all use some more sexy poems in our life, I present you with 12 of my favorite excerpts and full-length literary flirtations:
“The Atheist” by Megan Falley
“The first time we made love I realized why I never prayed. One human can only sayOh God so many times.”
—from After the Witch Hunt
From “After We Break Into My Apartment Because I Lost My Keys” by Sierra DeMulder
“It has been a week since I’ve been in my apartment.I want to touch everything. I want to wash every dish
in the kitchen sink like a newborn.
I want to pull you to the floor to make loveamong the ticket stubs, the bobby pins,
the evidence of living.”
—from New Shoes on a Dead Horse
From “Christine” by Amy Gerstler
Once in civics class, he touched myblouse like it was a page he wantedyou turn. For a second, I went trans-parent, lightheaded: a whiff of helium or ether, a sheet of tracingpaper or a tea leaf; slight as theexhalation it takes to say my name.
—from The True Bride
From “What the Hour Hand Said to the Minute Hand” by Megan Falley
“At 6:32 I see you in the distance, each moment a tease until you drape over me. We always love quick and you never let me hold you. I dream of drinking you through a straw.”
—from After the Witch Hunt
From “Right There Yes” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
Some women fake their orgasms to hear the sound of their own voices. Ironically, it gets them off.
I, too, have written poems I wanted to be true.
—from The Year of No Mistakes
From “When the Economy Was Booming” by Mindy Nettifee
We used to masturbate to Radiohead or slide in some Nine Inch Nails and hook our thumbs around the jutting hip bones of some skinny messy boy.
The world was ours enough at least to piss and puke and fuck on.
—from Rise of the Trust Fall
From “Prayer in Hell’s Kitchen” by Alex Dimitrov
“Wilde ones, let us forgive the bitter pill delivered
with each finger shoved down. Forgive tasting Judas. Forgive nothing.
Here is the bed, dark like a true beginning.
We all enter the body alone and only once.
We do not get to stay.”
—from Begging for It
From “American Tourist” by Ilya Kaminsky
In a city made of seaweed we danced on a rooftop, my hands under her breasts. Subtracting day from day, I add this woman’s ankles
to my days of atonement, her lower lip, the formal bones of her face. We were making love all evening —I told her stories, their rituals of rain: happiness
is money, yet, but only the smallest coins.
—from Dancing in Odessa
From “Come. Sit. Heel. Stay.” By Sierra DeMulder
When I took your virginity, I did it carelessly, like a dog left alone in a butcher shop. I taught you the way adults love (quick, dry, no eye contact.)
A year later, in the back of your car, you showed me what you had learned, what kind of man I had trained you to be.
—from The Bones Below
"To a Dark Moses" by Lucille Clifton
You are the oneI am lit for.
Come with your rodthat twistsand is a serpent.
—from Poem Hunter
From "Arrival" by William Carlos Williams
And yet one arrives somehow,finds himself loosening the hooks ofher dressin a strange bedroom —feels the autumndropping its silk and linen leavesabout her ankles.
—from Poem Hunter
From “When the Apocalypse Comes” by Sierra DeMulder
When the apocalypse does come, I will rebuild our city with my tongue. I will suck this world’s ashes from your fingers. I will refuse to let the fires of this hell be the only thing that makes us sweat.
When the apocalypse comes, so will we.
—from The Bones Below
Images: Giphy(4)
