Do you ever feel like a small part of you
is melting with every soft word born between us?
I pour my liquid self into the parts of your voice that
break and halt and inhale –
all those intimate parts are perfect places
for me to slip in.
Given the chance, where would you slip in?

There are few people who I would let in
to the places where I am broken
but I would let you in
anywhere our words might take you.
Given the chance, would you come in?

My words might take it too far and
infrequently during our conversations
I have to remind my clitoris
that this is none of her business.
But given the chance, what would you do?

~~~

Sam Rose is a writer and editor from Northamptonshire, England. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. Her work has appeared in Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Pacific, Haiku Journal, In Between Hangovers, and others. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to music and eating too much chocolate.

I almost called him “Daddy”

when his hands were around my neck,

I wanted to be his babygirl in heart-shaped glasses

and slick bare skin—no lies between me and him.

And even now in separate seats,

the shape of his fingers feed the fire

I feel at the nape and roll down

my spine in a lusty blaze.

I won’t mind when he tilts my chin

and makes me get on my knees.

I’ll listen closely for each command.

~~~

Yara S. Nerida is a Latina poet who has been writing for over a decade. Her work has been published in The Sonnetarium at Rhythm and Bones Literary Magazine. Her work will be featured in Vessel Press. She has a collaborative chapbook, Good Girl Games, with Kristin Garth forthcoming from Maverick Duck Press.

lush theory

Your fingers are my favorite

though much more could be said.

Whiskered whispers, wickedness,

you hold me down in bed.

Brown eyes going black on top

as you push so deep inside;

the way I always stretch for you,

how you never let me hide.

It’s the tease inside your touch,

fingertip against my clit

that breaks me down

to who I am, compels me to submit.

And when those fingers enter,

I hold them in so tight.

Two commas curl inside me

remove all wrong from right.

A magician with a flourish,

you wield them like a trick.

Your fingers are my favorite thing

to feel and then to lick.

~~~

Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. In addition to Horny Poetry, her sonnets have stalked magazines like Luna Luna, TERSE. Journal, Occulum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Drunk Monkeys, Ghost City Review, Neologism Poetry Journal and many other publications. Her chapbook Pink Plastic House is available from maverickduckpress.com, and her second, Shakespeare for Sociopaths, is forthcoming from The Hedgehog Poetry Press in January 2019. Follow her on Twitter: @lolaandjolie

I Love The Way You Say ‘Fuck’

I’m in the palm of your hand—

both figuratively and literally

You say:

“I’m so into you”

I say:

“both figuratively and literally”

You laugh from between my legs

twist your wrist

quote Lacan

into the skin of my thigh.

your voice is vibrating

as it gets muffled into me

I can’t comprehend much

except my grip on the pillow

except my mouth forming frantic, filthy

endearments muffled into

my own palm.

I hold the words there

stretch them outward to you

stroke your cheek with them

when you look up at me.

Our Two-ness

Thinking about you

eating me out makes me

cry now.

You said it was the

closest you’ve ever gotten

to meditating.

You said this while

I was on my back on the floor

in my parent’s basement.

I’m at work now. I thought about

that a lot though, you know,

at work.

“Fuck, Baby,” you’d say—

in your eyes I’d see my face

reflected back.

Even when you weren’t talking

your mouth

always moved dialectically.

Now, instead of heat and blood—

warm syrup pouring

into my stomach and lower—

my heart beats a funeral dirge.

I wear black panties in mourning.

~~~

Alyssa Ciamp is a scientist, a writer and an aries continually growing into herself. She tweets regularly about her work and also about the woes of being horny @ClinicallyChill. Find more of her work on her website: Alyssaciamp.com

his lips are the ellipses between my clumsy words.

I tell him I like you too but what I mean is

I’m two beers away from calling him God,

a glass of wine away from losing

all feeling in the upper hand.

the folds of my body open like

evening primrose, like petals thrown

on dishevelled mattress, pinot noir languor,

murmuring to the candles, to myself, to all

that is melting and wavering

to lie still for him.

change fell from his pockets as I watched him get dressed

and he left it on the nightstand like payment.

he told me I was perfect, but what isn’t

perfect by candlelight?

he keeps me like a wildflower in tap water,

like half-finished poetry. I keep him like

a spellbook under my mattress.

what is an affair but looking

for a self you lost in someone else?

~~~

Rebecca Kokitus is a part time resident of Media, PA just outside Philadelphia, and a part time resident of a small town in rural Schuylkill County, PA. She is an aspiring poet and is currently an undergraduate in the writing program at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She has been previously published by Philosophical Idiot, Lemon Star Mag, and Show Your Skin Journal. She tweets at @rxbxcca_anna.

If the flowers decline to tell the bees why
they are tasked with stretching the thread
of continuance all the way to the garden’s edge
—or why they must adumbrate its shaky lace
even in the face of hard hands or a wet
summer—then why should we have to move

so far from this godly meadow, one move
shy of the brutallest checkmate? At the Y
I watched your legs resist equipment, wet
like the dogs no one shakes or the thread
no one can make go into the needlelace
because it’s borderline, too near an edge

to manipulate. If I ask you to edge
before I get home it’s because I move
too slowly anyway—I want to lace
your bones with shimmering desire, the why
to want’s what, the unhidden thread
we lay bare in the rich, soily wet

of mid-May, our brief spring’s groaning whet-
stone. Who brought us to the edge
of living? Which forum thread
told us the exact dimensions of the move
we needed to make, and why
on earth didn’t we tell anyone? Two lace-

less cleats, cast up high in the one place
you’ll never be able to reach them. A sweat
ring wrung permanent in the bedclothes. Why
not fool around a little before work, at the edge
of our shared wakefulness? Don’t move,
I’ll turn off this seemingly endless thread

of alarms, your morning body’s warmth red
and breathing next to mine. If my place
in the universe were at even a small remove
from yours, my ugly heart would pirouette
out across the roof of the world to a ledge
off which I’d leap / towards you. This is why

I’m so afraid to thread your wet
hair anyplace but through mine. The edge
is too close to move. I hope you see why.

~~~

By Nathanielle Dawn