Lusty stories to tell in the dark?

June 15, 2011 2:53 PM

Erotic "bedtime" prose and poetry to read aloud?

The best thing I've ever written was a poetic prose daydream letter about a fantasy lover. Reading it out loud to my boyfriend led to the best sex I've ever had, as he apparently finds my voice and my creativity particularly stimulating.

I'd like to read to him as foreplay from time to time, and while I definitely plan to make original material part of that practice, I'd like to have some works by the great masters of erotic writing in my stable.

Ideally, I'm looking for pieces under 2000 words that would be easy to "perform" without much preparation, and be simultaneously poetic (lots of metaphor) and explicit (not overly philosophical/abstract).

posted by anonymous to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

ee cummings:

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new
posted by anya32 at 3:04 PM on June 15, 2011

Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee.
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be....

--John Donne, To his mistress going to bed. It's got both metaphor and explicitness. Loads of metaphor.

Parts of Frost's The Pauper Witch of Grafton, maybe:

I made him gather me wet snowberries
On slippery rocks beside a waterfall.
I made him do it for me in the dark.
And he liked everything I made him do.

Also Frost's To Earthward, which begins:

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;

and ends with two amazingly sexy verses, although possibly too metaphorical for your purposes.

Robert Herrick's The Vine:

her long small legs & thighs
I with my Tendrils did surprize;
Her Belly, Buttocks, and her Waste
By my soft Nerv'lits were embrac'd:

Explicit, but maybe too funny (and possibly the first tentacle porn?)

A woman waits for me, Walt Whitman:

A WOMAN waits for me—she contains all, nothing is lacking,
Yet all were lacking, if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were
lacking.
Sex contains all...
posted by frobozz at 3:57 PM on June 15, 2011

love sonnet xi by pablo neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
posted by anya32 at 4:18 PM on June 15, 2011

This book of short erotica by Anais Nin! It's the classic. I've been meaning to pull some of these out to read to my boyfriend.
posted by sunnichka at 8:13 PM on June 15, 2011

Verse: A Rapture by Thomas Carew

Story: Putting the Devil back into Hell, from Boccaccio's Decameron.

(Down to: "Wherefore, young ladies, I beseech you if you would deserve Heaven's grace, lend yourselves to the putting of the Devil in Hell; for it is a thing beloved of God, pleasing to the participants, and one from which much good comes and ensues.")
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:33 PM on July 6, 2011