Free The Poetry of Sex by Sophie Hannah

she
    but it’s life said he
    but your wife said she
    now said he)
    ow said she
    (tiptop said he
    don’t stop said she
    oh no said he)
    go slow said she
    (cccome? said he
    ummm said she)
    you’re divine! said he
    (you are Mine said she)

Adultery
Carol Ann Duffy
    Wear dark glasses in the rain.
    Regard what was unhurt
    as though through a bruise.
    Guilt. A sick, green tint.
    New gloves, money tucked in the palms,
    the handshake crackles. Hands
    can do many things. Phone.
    Open the wine. Wash themselves. Now
    you are naked under your clothes all day,
    slim with deceit. Only the once
    brings you alone to your knees,
    miming, more, more, older and sadder,
    creative. Suck a lie with a hole in it
    on the way home from a lethal, thrilling night
    up against a wall, faster. Language
    unpeels a lost cry. You’re a bastard.
    Do it do it do it. Sweet darkness
    in the afternoon; a voice in your ear
    telling you how you are wanted,
    which way, now. A telltale clock
    wiping the hours from its face, your face
    on a white sheet, gasping, radiant, yes.
    Pay for it in cash, fiction, cab-fares back
    to the life which crumbles like a wedding-cake.
    Paranoia for lunch; too much
    to drink, as a hand on your thigh
    tilts the restaurant. You know all about love,
    don’t you. Turn on your beautiful eyes
    for a stranger who’s dynamite in bed, again
    and again; a slow replay in the kitchen
    where the slicing of innocent onions
    scalds you to tears. Then, selfish autobiographical sleep
    in a marital bed, the tarnished spoon of your body
    stirring betrayal, your heart over-ripe at the core.
    You’re an expert, darling; your flowers
    dumb and explicit on nobody’s birthday.
    So write the script – illness and debt,
    a ring thrown away in a garden
    no moon can heal, your own words
    commuting to bile in your mouth, terror –
    and all for the same thing twice. And all
    for the same thing twice. You did it.
    What. Didn’t you. Fuck. Fuck. No. That was
    the wrong verb. This is only an abstract noun.

The Dark Night of the Sole
Kit Wright
    ‘My husband’s an odd fish,’ she said.
        A casual remark
    And yet it lingered in my head
    And later, when we went to bed,
        It woke me in the dark.
    My husband’s an odd fish.
I lay
        Uneasy. On the ceiling
    Raw lorry lights strobe-lit the grey
    Glimmer of dawn. Sleepless dismay
        Revolved upon the feeling
    Of something wrong in what I’d heard,
        Some deep, unhappy thing,
    Some
odder
fact her statement blurred.
    And then a prickling horror stirred
        Within me as the wing
    Of madness brushed. I recognized
        The real thing strange to be
    Not dorsal structure (fins disguised)
    Nor travel habits (route revised:
        A Day Return to sea)
    But that he was a fish at all!
        Trembling, I left the bed
    Dressed quickly, tiptoed through the hall,
    Edged past him, gaping from his stall
        Of oval water, fled
    To where I sit and write these lines,
        Sweating. I saw and heard
    Strange things last night. Cold guilt defines
    The moral: learn to read the signs –
        She was an odd, odd bird.

‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’
William Shakespeare
    The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
    Is lust in action: and till action, lust
    Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
    Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
    Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;
    Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
    Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait,
    On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
    Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
    Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
    A bliss in proof, – and prov’d, a very woe;
    Before, a joy propos’d; behind a dream.
    All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
    To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Cyber Infidelity
Jane Holland
    Beautiful lover, still beautiful
    because unseen, as far apart
    as two incalculable griefs
    on either side of a war, cast
    the broken parts of