The Best American Erotic Poems Read online

(1964)

  TENNESSEE WILLIAMS (1911–1983)

  Life Story

  After you’ve been to bed together for the first time,

  without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,

  the other party very often says to you,

  Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,

  what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

  sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up

  a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you

  lying together in completely relaxed positions

  like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

  You tell them your story, or as much of your story

  as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,

  Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

  each time a little more faintly, until the oh

  is just an audible breath, and then of course

  there’s some interruption. Slow room service comes up

  with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee

  and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.

  And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time

  to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,

  they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all

  along,

  and you’re saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

  each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming

  no more than an audible sigh,

  as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,

  draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion

  and stops breathing forever. Then?

  Well, one of you falls asleep

  and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his

  mouth,

  and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

  (1956)

  MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913–1980)

  What I See

  Lie there, in sweat and dream, I do, and “there”

  Is here, my bed, on which I dream

  You, lying there, on yours, locked, pouring love,

  While I tormented here see in my reins

  You, perfectly at climax. And the lion strikes.

  I want you with whatever obsessions come—

  I wanted your obsession to be mine

  But if it is that unknown half-suggested strange

  Other figure locked in your climax, then

  I here, I want you and the other, want your obsession,

  want

  Whatever is locked into you now while I sweat and

  dream.

  (1968)

  MAY SWENSON (1913–1989)

  A New Pair

  Like stiff whipped cream in peaks and tufts afloat,

  the two on barely gliding waves approach.

  One’s neck curves back, the whole head to the eyebrows

  hides in the wing’s whiteness.

  The other drifts erect, one dark splayed foot

  lifted along a snowy hull.

  On thin, transparent platforms of the waves

  the pair approach each other, as if without intent.

  Do they touch? Does it only seem so to my eyes’

  perspective where I stand on shore?

  I wish them together, to become one fleece enfolded, proud

  vessel of cloud, shape until now unknown.

  Tense, I stare and wait, while slow waves carry them

  closer. And side does graze creamy side.

  One tall neck dips, is laid along the other’s back,

  at the place where an arm would embrace.

  A brief caress. Then both sinuous necks arise,

  their paddle feet fall to water. As I stare,

  with independent purpose at full sail, they steer apart.

  (1985)

  ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER (1915–1981)

  The Milkman

  The door was bolted and the windows of my porch

  were screened to keep invaders out, the mesh of rustproof

  wire sieved the elements. Did my throat parch

  then sat I at my table there and ate with lust

  most chaste, the raw red apples; juice, flesh, rind and core.

  One still and summer noon while dining in the sun

  I was poulticing my thirst with apples, slaking care,

  when suddenly I felt a whir of dread. Soon, soon,

  stiff as a bone, I listened for the Milkman’s tread.

  I heard him softly bang the door of the huge truck

  and then his boots besieged my private yard. I tried

  to keep my eyes speared to the table, but the suck

  of apprehension milked my force. At last he mounted

  my backstairs, climbed to the top, and there he stood still

  outside the bolted door. The sun’s colour fainted.

  I felt the horror of his quiet melt me, steal

  into my sockets, and seduce me to him from

  my dinner. His hand clung round the latch like rubber.

  I felt him ooze against the screen and shake the frame.

  I had to slide the bolt; and thus I was the robber

  of my porch. Breathing smiling shape of fright,

  the Milkman made his entrance; insistent donor,

  he held in soft bleached hands the bottled sterile fruit,

  and gave me this fatal, this apostate dinner.

  Now in winter I have retreated from the porch

  into the house and the once red apples rot where

  I left them on the table. Now if my throat parch

  for fruit the Milkman brings a quart for my despair.

  (1955)

  RUTH STONE (BORN 1915)

  Coffee and Sweet Rolls

  When I remember the dingy hotels

  where we lay reading Baudelaire,

  your long elegant fingers, the nervous ritual

  of your cigarette; you, a young poet working

  in the steel mills; me, married

  to a dull chemical engineer.

  Fever of having nothing to lose;

  no luggage, a few books, the streetcar.

  In the manic shadow of Hitler, the guttural

  monotony of war; often just enough money

  for the night. Rising together in the clanking

  elevators to those rooms where we lay like embryos;

  helpless in the desire to be completed;

  to be issued out into the terrible world.

  All night, sighing and waking, insatiable.

  At daylight, counting our change, you would go for coffee.

  Then, lying alone, I heard the sirens,

  the common death of everything and again

  the little girl I didn’t know

  all in white in a white casket;

  the boy I once knew, smashed with his motorcycle

  into the pavement, and what was said,

  “made a wax figure for his funeral,”

  came into me. I had never touched the dead.

  Always the lock unclicked and you were back,

  our breakfast in a paper sack.

  What I waited for was the tremor in your voice.

  In those rooms with my eyes half open,

  I memorized for that austere and silent woman

  who waited in the future,

  who for years survived on this fiction;

  so even now I can see you standing thin and naked,

  the shy flush of your rising cock pointed toward heaven,

  as you pull down the dark window shade.

  (1995)

  THOMAS M CGRATH (1916–1990)

  from Letter to an Imaginary Friend

  Sweet Jesus at morning the queenly women of our youth!

  The monumental creatures of our summer lust!

  Sweet fantastic darlings, as full of juice
as plums,

  Pneumatic and backless as a functional dream

  Where are ye now?

  Where were ye then, indeed?

  Walking three-legged in the sexual haze,

  Drifting toward the Lion on the bosomy hills of summer,

  In the hunting light, the marmoreal bulge of the moon,

  I wooed them barebacked in the saddling heat.

  First was Inez, her face a looney fiction,

  Her bottom like concrete and her wrestling arms;

  Fay with breasts as hard as hand grenades

  (Whose father’s shot gun dozed behind the door),

  Barefooted Rose, found in the bottom lands

  (We laid the flax as flat as forty horses,

  The blue bells showering); Amy with her long hair

  Drawn in mock modesty between long legs;

  And Sandy with her car, who would be driving and do it;

  And June who would roll you as in a barrel down hill—

  The Gaelic torture; Gin with her snapping trap,

  The heliotropic quim: locked in till daybreak;

  Literary Esther, who could fox your copy,

  And the double Gladys, one blonde, one black.

  O great kingdom of Fuck! And myself: plenipotentiary!

  Under the dog star’s blaze, in the high rooms of the moonlight,

  In the doze and balance of the wide noon,

  I hung my pennant from the top of the windy mast:

  Jolly Roger sailing the want-not seas of the summers.

  And under the coupling of the wheeling night

  Muffled in flesh and clamped to the sweaty pelt

  Of Blanche or Betty, threshing the green baroque

  Stacks of the long hay—the burrs stuck in our crotch,

  The dust thick in our throats so we sneezed in spasm—

  Or flat on the floor, or the back seat of a car,

  Or a groaning trestle table in the Methodist Church basement,

  And far in the fields, and high in the hills, and hot

  And quick in the roaring cars: by the bridge, by the river,

  In Troop Nine’s dank log cabin where the Cheyenne flows:

  By light, by dark, up on the roof, in the celler,

  In the rattling belfry where the bats complained,

  Or backed against trees, or against the squealing fences,

  Or belly to belly with no place to lie down

  In the light of the dreaming moon.

  (1962)

  ROBERT DUNCAN (1919–1988)

  The Torso (Passage 18)

  Most beautiful! the red-flowering eucalyptus,

  the madrone, the yew

  Is he…

  So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms

  The sight of London to my exiled eyes

  Is as Elysium to a new-come soul

  If he be Truth

  I would dwell in the illusion of him

  His hands unlocking from chambers of my male body

  such an idea in man’s image

  rising tides that sweep me towards him

  …homosexual?

  and at the treasure of his mouth

  pour forth my soul

  his soul commingling

  I thought a Being more than vast, His body leading

  into Paradise, his eyes

  quickening a fire in me a trembling

  hieroglyph: At the root of the neck

  the clavicle, for the neck is the stem of the great artery

  upward into his head that is beautiful

  At the rise of the pectoral muscles

  the nipples, for the breasts are like sleeping fountains of

  feeling in man, waiting above the beat of his heart,

  shielding the rise and fall of his breath, to be

  awakend

  At the axis of his mid riff

  the navel, for in the pit of his stomach the chord from

  which first he was fed has its temple

  At the root of the groin

  the pubic hair, for the torso is the stem in which the man

  flowers forth and leads to the stamen of flesh in which

  his seed rises

  a wave of need and desire over taking me

  cried out my name

  (This was long ago. It was another life)

  and said,

  What do you want of me?

  I do not know, I said. I have fallen in love. He

  has brought me into heights and depths my heart

  would fear without him. His look

  pierces my side • fire eyes •

  I have been waiting for you, he said:

  I know what you desire

  you do not yet know but through me •

  And I am with you everywhere. In your falling

  I have fallen from a high place. I have raised myself

  from darkness in your rising

  wherever you are

  my hand in your hand seeking the locks, the keys

  I am there. Gathering me, you gather

  your Self •

  For my Other is not a woman but a man

  the King upon whose bosom let me lie.

  (1968)

  CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920–1994)

  Hunk of Rock

  Nina was the hardest of them

  all,

  the worst woman I had known

  up to that moment

  and I was sitting in front of

  my secondhand black and white

  tv

  watching the news

  when I heard a suspicious

  sound in the kitchen

  and I ran out there

  and saw her with

  a full bottle of whiskey—

  a 5th—

  and she had it and

  was headed for the back porch

  door

  but I caught her and

  grabbed at the bottle.

  “give me that bottle, you

  fucking whore!”

  and we wrestled for the

  bottle

  and let me tell you

  she gave me a good fight

  for it

  but

  I got it away from her

  and I told her to

  get her ass out of

  there.

  she lived in the same place

  in the back

  upstairs.

  I locked the door

  took the bottle and a

  glass

  went out to the couch

  sat down and

  opened the bottle and

  poured myself a good

  one.

  I shut off the tv and

  sat there

  thinking about what a

  hard number

  Nina was.

  I came up with

  at least

  a dozen lousy things

  she had done

  to me.

  what a whore.

  what a hunk of rock.

  I sat there drinking

  the whiskey

  and wondering

  what I was doing

  with Nina.

  then there was a

  knock on the

  door.

  it was Nina’s friend,

  Helga.

  “where’s Nina?”

  she asked.

  “she tried to steal

  my whiskey, I

  ran her ass

  out of here.”

  “she said to meet

  her here.”

  “what for?”

  “she said me and her

  were going to do it

  in front of you

  for $50.”

  “$25.”

  “she said $50.”

  “well, she’s not

  here…want a

  drink?”

  “sure…”

  I got Helga a glass

  poured her a

  whiskey.


  she took a

  hit.

  “maybe,” she said,

  “I ought to go get

  Nina.”

  “I don’t want to see

  her.”

  “why not?”

  “she’s a whore.”

  Helga finished her

  drink and I poured

  her another.

  she took a

  hit.

  “Benny calls me a

  whore, I’m no

  whore.”

  Benny was the guy

  she was shacked

  with.

  “I know you’re no

  whore, Helga.”

  “thanks. Ain’t ya got no

  music?”

  “just the radio…”

  she saw it

  got up

  turned it

  on.

  some music came

  blaring out.

  Helga began to

  dance

  holding her whiskey

  glass in one

  hand.

  she wasn’t a good

  dancer

  she looked

  ridiculous.

  she stopped

  drained her drink

  rolled her glass along the

  rug

  then ran toward

  me

  dropped to her knees

  unzipped me

  and then

  she was down

  there

  doing tricks.

  I drained my