I
keep my reader's diary to share my thoughts on recent reads, new discoveries,
and favorite books. I do not accept requests to review books, or reader
copies, from authors. Nothing here is a solicited review.
Earlier
this week we discussed the role poetry has in helping us to be better
writers. Several authors I approached were kind enough to share some of their
erotic poetry with me, among them author Adrea Kore, who shared two
pieces. The first of these, Threshold, captured
my attention immediately.
Threshold evokes a detailed scene of erotic bondage. While my
earliest assumption is a scene between a male and female partner, I find it
interesting to read through it a second time and realize there’s no actual
details identifying the sex of either participant, which leaves the door open for
the poem to be fully accessible to any readers regardless of orientation or
gender. Personally, I like that, since my own bondage fantasies may wander from
hetero to bisexual to pansexual play, depending on my mood. I could illustrate
this poem in my mind with any combination of players.
But more provocative to me is the consistent repetition of bodily
imagery, a personification of the non-human elements in play and the roles
assigned to different parts of the anatomy. Descriptions of a wall as the
speaker’s backbone, and the rope binding the speaker’s wrists as the fingers of
their partner. The casting of tongue and teeth as interrogators, and skin and
arteries holding the secrets of the subject’s confessions. These details give
to me a sense of more than one relationship, more than two players. They also
heighten the sense of nearness and pressure between two bodies, given that the
tongue and teeth (again, the interrogators) are interacting so closely with the
flesh.
There are several evocations of contrast: surrender vs. a hard embrace
(soft vs. hard), coolness of the wall vs. the heat of the partner’s body, the
wall vs. ‘your weight’, refusal vs. acquiescence. If there’s one thing I love
in sensual imagery, it’s evocative use of contrast. But Adrea’s poem is full of
powerful and sensual descriptive imagery. Just a few of my favorites include:
“Let the wall be my backbone / as I give up gravity to
you”
“Your tongue and teeth interrogate secrets / Embedded
long ago in arteries and skin”
“The taste sweet, clear, as lychee nectar”
But perhaps the most powerful line in Adrea’s poem is the final line.
After six stanzas, each six lines, of a journey through this erotic exchange,
the final line stands alone, promising the passion is not over:
“Again.”
