The Erotic Poetry of E. E. Cummings

​"E. E. Cummings’s erotic poems and drawings gathered in a single volume.

Many years ago the prodigious and famously prolific E. E. Cummings sat in his study writing and thinking about sex. His private brooding gave way to poems and drawings of sexual and romantic love that delight and provoke. Here, collected for this first time in a single volume, are those erotic poems and sketches, culled from Cummings’s original manuscripts by the distinguished editor George James Firmage."

xix. 
my girl’s tall with hard long eyes 
as she stands,with her long hard hands keeping 
silence on her dress,good for sleeping 
is her long hard body filled with surprise 
like a white shocking wire,when she smiles 
a hard long smile it sometimes makes 
gaily go clean through me tickling aches, 
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files 
my impatience to an edge—my girl’s tall 
and taut,with thin legs just like a vine 
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall, 
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed 
with these legs she begins to heave and twine 
about me,and to kiss my face and head.

 xvii.

Lady,i will touch you with my mind. 
Touch you and touch and touch 
until you give 
me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene 

(lady i will 
touch you with my mind.)Touch 
you,that is all, 

lightly and you utterly will become 
with infinite ease 

the poem which i do not write.

xx. 

you asked me to come:it was raining a little, 
and the spring;a clumsy brightness of air 
wonderfully stumbled above the square, 
little amorous-tadpole people wiggled 

battered by stuttering pearl, 
                                   leaves jiggled 
to the jigging fragrance of newness 
—and then.  My crazy fingers liked your dress 
....your kiss,your kiss was a distinct brittle 

flower,and the flesh crisp set 
my love-tooth on edge. So until light 
each having each we promised to forget— 

wherefore is there nothing left to guess: 
the cheap intelligent thighs,the electric trite 
thighs;the hair stupidly priceless.