I CRAVE YOUR MOUTH By Pablo Nevuda * * * 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. *** (Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet, diplomat, and politician who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ SHE SAID By Michael Faudet * * * “Romance is all well and good, but… it’s just that I am not in the mood for whispered sweet nothings or your fingers running softly through my hair. What I want, more than anything, is for you to treat me like your own personal sex doll. Don’t kiss me – make me bite my lip.” *** (Michael Faudet is an Australian novelist, poet, and author of ‘Dirty Pretty Things.’) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ HE IS MORE THAN A HERO By Sappho *** He is more than a hero. He is a god in my eyes - the man who is allowed to sit beside you — he who listens intimately to the sweet murmur of your voice, the enticing laughter that makes my own heart beat fast. If I meet you suddenly, I can't speak — my tongue is broken; a thin flame runs under my skin; seeing nothing, hearing only my own ears drumming, I drip with sweat; trembling shakes my body and I turn paler than dry grass. At such times death isn't far from me. *** (Sappho was an archaic Greek poet from the Island of Lesbos. She is known for her lyric poetry, much of which alludes to her sexuality. This poem describes Sappho’s turbulent emotions in regards to a woman she loves but cannot have.)