your leisure,
Form words that I treasure –
Such filth, without measure.
Then later, the flicker,
First slowly then quicker,
Addictive as liquor,
Still making me thicker
And harder inside you;
Your mouth, open wide to
Take all I provide through
Your lips as I ride you.
4
‘ALL OUR STATES UNITED’
Tying the Knots
Anna-May Laugher
On Audrey’s wedding night
she took a pin to bed;
stabbed her finger in the breathless dark
and dabbed the linen of the ‘breaking cloth’.
She made small sounds that passed for pain,
not sure it was enough, she stabbed again,
smeared a thumb-ful of redemptive blood
across the white of her stocking top.
Audrey was sixty when we met, lovely and vast,
like a dimpled sow in a yellow tabard;
always a scuff-chafe-scuff of thighs
as she mopped corridors and stairs.
Each day, once the Matins bell had stopped,
I’d wash left-greasy supper pots,
she’d squat and settle with toast and tea,
plotting lavish nuptials for her Marie.
She liked her family traditions,
the Kimber cloth for ‘breaking in’.
Five generations of bridal virgins
‘taken’ on it by eager men.
‘Well I saaaay five’ she said and smiled.
‘It wouldn’t matter now, but then …’
Bicycle Pump
Irving Layton
The idle gods for laughs gave man his rump;
In sport, so made his kind that when he sighs
In ecstasy between a woman’s thighs
He goes up and down, a bicycle pump;
And his beloved once his seed is sown
Swells like a faulty tube on one side blown.
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
Form words that I treasure –
Such filth, without measure.
Then later, the flicker,
First slowly then quicker,
Addictive as liquor,
Still making me thicker
And harder inside you;
Your mouth, open wide to
Take all I provide through
Your lips as I ride you.
4
‘ALL OUR STATES UNITED’
Tying the Knots
Anna-May Laugher
On Audrey’s wedding night
she took a pin to bed;
stabbed her finger in the breathless dark
and dabbed the linen of the ‘breaking cloth’.
She made small sounds that passed for pain,
not sure it was enough, she stabbed again,
smeared a thumb-ful of redemptive blood
across the white of her stocking top.
Audrey was sixty when we met, lovely and vast,
like a dimpled sow in a yellow tabard;
always a scuff-chafe-scuff of thighs
as she mopped corridors and stairs.
Each day, once the Matins bell had stopped,
I’d wash left-greasy supper pots,
she’d squat and settle with toast and tea,
plotting lavish nuptials for her Marie.
She liked her family traditions,
the Kimber cloth for ‘breaking in’.
Five generations of bridal virgins
‘taken’ on it by eager men.
‘Well I saaaay five’ she said and smiled.
‘It wouldn’t matter now, but then …’
Bicycle Pump
Irving Layton
The idle gods for laughs gave man his rump;
In sport, so made his kind that when he sighs
In ecstasy between a woman’s thighs
He goes up and down, a bicycle pump;
And his beloved once his seed is sown
Swells like a faulty tube on one side blown.
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
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