April soft and cold: big love-crumbs

Y’all know how much I love e.e. cummings—I’ve shared a variety of his poems with you over the years, about Spring, about both love and the shells of humans, about World War I, and the ultimate (in my view) distillation of war.

In this one I think cummings gives Andrew Marvell a run for his money in terms of sending frissons of heat throughout various parts of the reader’s body.

“i like my body”

i like my body when it is with your

body. It is so quite a new thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body. i like what it does,

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones, and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which I will

again and again and again

kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz

of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh...And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new