#Desire

Sensual and Intimate English Poems (18+)

Sensual and intimate English poems for adult readers: rosewater in Shiraz, monsoon rains, Jaipur rooftops and slow dances, from the 18+ Library.

The Interpreter

by Jegal Soo-ah

In a glass tower in Seoul, a billion-dollar deal passes through one woman's mouth. By day she turns French into Korean. By night, in a hotel room on the 31st floor, the French negotiator teaches her words that aren't in any contract — and then asks her to change just one sentence.

Mezcal

by Ximena Arreola Batiz

Rain on an Oaxaca courtyard, two clay cups, orange and worm salt, and a woman who explains, very slowly, how mezcal is meant to be kissed.

The Tailor of Yaba

by Chidinma Ezeanya-Hart

Six years after he left her for a richer woman, he walks into her shop in Yaba to be measured for his wedding suit. She is the best tailor in Lagos. She takes her time. She takes every measurement. And she sews something into the lining that he will wear all day.

Room 714

by Seo Ga-on

A business trip to Busan, two colleagues, a typhoon warning, and the thirty steps of hotel corridor between his door and hers.

Ariadne, Afterwards

by Danae Kritikopoulou

A long poem in Ariadne's voice: left asleep on the beach at Naxos by the hero she saved, she wakes to the wine god walking out of the sea. She knows how his kind of love ends. She goes to him anyway.

Loadshedding

by Rumana Kabir Shetu

A Dhaka power cut on a June night, the children at their grandmother's, a hand fan, a candle and a husband she suddenly sees again.

Polaroids from Esplanade Avenue

by Josephine Arceneaux Pryor

A photographer in New Orleans has taken three hundred and twelve instant photos of the same jazz singer. She knows every angle of his face. Then she climbs the stairs to his balcony on Esplanade Avenue and finds out who's really been watching whom.

Fado for a Body

by Catarina Vilaverde Moita

A Lisbon fado singer writes the song she will never sing on stage: about one body, one night, and the guitar that was in the room.

The Ice Room

by Margaux Thibodeau-Grant

Every winter she carves a hotel out of ice outside Quebec City, and every winter the same married man books the same suite. This year she carved his face into the headboard. Only she knows it's there. Only she knows what melts in April.

Rooftop, Jaipur, May

by Anvita Sahay Kothari

Forty-four degrees at midnight, a string cot on the roof, a sweating clay pot, and a wife of twelve years who has decided tonight is not for sleeping.

The Harvest at Quinta da Lapa

by Matilde Sequeira Brandão

She came to the Douro to pick grapes and forget Lisbon. The heir of the old quinta has a drowned brother, a mother who covers every mirror, and a way of looking at her as if he's seen her face before.

Typhoon Season

by Carmina Dimaculangan-Reyes

Signal number three over Manila, the power out, one candle, and two people who had agreed to stay just friends.

Monsoon Ledger

by Tahmina Rezwan Shoily

An auditor from Dhaka is sent to a bank branch in Chattogram in the middle of the monsoon. The numbers don't add up. Neither does the branch manager, with his candles, his mangoes and his very careful hands.

Rosewater

by Shirin Golzari Navab

Born in Shiraz, living in Dubai: a woman pours her grandmother's rosewater on a lover's wrists and turns an old ritual into something new.

The Understudy

by Agata Sowińska-Lech

For six months she has learned every line, every gesture, every breath of the woman playing Lady Macbeth in Warsaw. She knows the part by heart. She knows the actress by heart too. Then one night, the voice goes.

Long Rains

by Nyokabi Wairimu Kiarie

April in Nairobi, the long rains on the roof, the traffic stopped, and two people with nowhere to be for the first time in months.

Letters I Burned in Prague

by Šárka Vlčinská-Doubravová

A long poem in eleven letters, each one fed to an old iron stove in a Prague attic in January. Burning them was supposed to be the end. It turns out fire is just another way of reading.

Fever, Cartagena

by Salomé Arbeláez Quintero

A colonial room in Cartagena, a slow ceiling fan, rum with melting ice, and a heat that might be the weather and might be someone.

The Knife Sharpener’s Whistle

by Emiliano Barragán Ochoa

Every Thursday the knife sharpener's whistle comes down her street in Oaxaca. He has a scar along his jaw, hands like a surgeon's, and a past in the north that two men in a grey truck have come looking for.

First Flush

by Pahi Saikia Dowerah

Dawn in an Assam tea garden in spring, two leaves and a bud, and a hand that keeps reaching for the same bush as hers.

Off the Record

by Thandeka Mabuza-Ferreira

For two years every word the Minister said in public was hers. Late at night in his Pretoria office, the words were his. Then she found out what her sentences were covering — and wrote him one last speech.

Undressing the Light

by Ludovica Cernigoi

In Trieste the bora blows the curtains in, and a woman takes off the day one thing at a time while someone she loves watches from the bed.

Red Lacquer

by Tôn Nữ Diệp Khuê

The man who took her father's house wants a lacquer panel for his new hotel. She gives him eighteen layers of red, her nights, her body's attention — and something hidden underneath that only sanding will reveal.