Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Sarah Smeltzer is a writer and educator in Minneapolis. Born and raised in Minnesota, she recognizes that lakes are the best and spookiest bodies of water around. When she's not teaching, she's usually writing stories, rollerskating, cuddling her dog, or researching medieval women's mysticism.
Nailing down the best erotic poetry is difficult because preferences and tastes vary so greatly from person to person. This is great news! It means we have a variety of erotic poems to read that maximize and diversify our concept of sexiness.
As I was researching poems for this list, I found that I knew exactly what I didn’t like in an erotic poem. Descriptions of throbbing veins and the curve of her creamy whiteneck, for example, do not move me. This means that if you love phallic symbols and lingering contemplations of white ladies’ necks, you’re not going to see very much of that here. Sorry.
I landed on these 13 erotic poems that I think are genuinely sexy for one reason or another. For some, it’s the urgency in the speaker’s voice. It’s lovely to feel seen and needed. Poems with sensory detail so rich that I feel embodied in the poem itself also make a strong case for eroticism. There’s at least one poem here that had me pressing my hand to my heart with my mouth open, thinking with joy, “can they say that?”
So, here I present to you 13 erotic poems that span from the classics to the contemporary, each of which made me sigh at least once:
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, Until I labour, I in labour lie. The foe oft-times having the foe in sight, Is tir’d with standing though he never fight. Off with that girdle, like heaven’s Zone glistering, But a far fairer world encompassing.
Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed Together in my dream, through some dim glade, Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss.
You came to the side of the bed and sat staring at me. Then you kissed me—I felt hot wax on my forehead. I wanted it to leave a mark: that’s how I knew I loved you.
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.
