Sunday 30 December 2012

Twenty-First Century


When she unwrapped the iPad he
winked at her and
muttered something about joining the
modern world, which to her was a
sexless marriage, three
rapacious screenagers who only left their rooms to
rape the fridge and mountain the sink with
washing-up, but she gave it a go,
learnt to surf, discovered
Facebook and Twitter, made friends, read
blogs and through them
Lit and tumblr and flickr,
clicked links she knew she shouldn’t,
started an anonymous email, made
new “friends”, one of whom,
now that the house was empty, was
waiting for her new Skype name to
connect, for her to be suitably
undressed, to show her ability to take
direction in the use of those
interesting objects the postman had
unwittingly delivered, a performance she would
record to show her husband that his wife had
well and truly arrived in the
Twenty-First Century.

Thursday 27 December 2012

No-Tell Hotel


She was so grateful for the nearby
No-Tell Hotel, where the sight of
one woman and several men (only one of whom
seemingly married to her) caused no
comment: where a large room,
well-separated from others was
always available; where there was
no complaint about her serious screaming nor the
foul language of full-on sex; where there was always
extra towels to dry so many
sweaty bodies; where no-one objected to the
heavily soiled sheets or the
feral smell of so much
gloriously impersonal pleasure.

As she drank her coffee, sated,
watching her children scamper, she
vowed to reward the staff, somehow, and
funnily enough she knew the perfect place.

Tuesday 25 December 2012

Christmas Stocking


Her Christmas Stocking was
black, a fine denier,
tight-gartered, sleek, not suited to a
man’s ill-wrapped gift but
perfectly encasing  the
warm leg that led to the
best Christmas present
any man could wish for.

Thursday 13 December 2012

Keys


As the car took a sharp bend, the
keys caught her eye as they
swung in the street-light:

was the miniature Eiffel Tower
deliberately phallic or just an
amusing souvenir?

And that long Chubb looked serious:
was there a dungeon chez lui where his
wife liked to be stretched?

Would he want a bit of rough, this
man she barely knew? Would she
hurt in the morning? Would she mind?

She thought of that silly rabbit’s foot she’d
bought for her husband, wondered
whose wife was looking at that

swinging in another street-light, whether she
would think him weird: and where was
this man’s wife? In a

BMW, a Ford, a Peugeot?
Clean? Or cluttered, with
“Baby on Board” in the rear-window?

His cool hand crept up her
warm thigh to where there was
space for cold flesh, opening naturally,  

all beginning with a bowl, a
blindfold, a chaos of keys, a
story to tell in the morning.

Saturday 1 December 2012

A Valediction, Forbidding Morning


Let not this moist cavern of tangled limbs and
sweat and the sense of sex ever
evaporate but distil its latent power to
banish break of day so that
night and silence can reign in the
banked heat of skin on skin.