When you swing swift, open palm, to pinken
my upturned ass, I brace for the soft sting.
I take a sharp breath, then the ache stills me.
Your hands remind me to whom I belong.
 
You grasp my long hair, pull taut to tame me,
snare a whimper until I gasp your name.
Give me this reverie, animal urged
to break free. Break me. I beg, please, don’t stop.
 
I lose count and collapse, still obeisant
in your embrace. You caress where you’ve bruised,
where you’ve used skin to mark me your canvas.
You coax me back from the brink of spent sense,
 
Call me good girl, your leather-leashed darling.
I promise, I’ll be a good girl this time.

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Prompt: Submissive Poetics

What do sexual submission and poetic form have in common? Restraints!

Write an erotic poem that is informed by formal rules. Use precise meter, repeating rhyme schemes, or received forms. In what ways might your obedience to a form or set of rules (or your break from them, you poetic brat!) mirror the erotic moment depicted? How might being forced into particular decisions (or positions) allow you freedom to explore? A multiple-orgasm villanelle? A sestina for your seven-person orgy, each line ending with the name of a new lover? An ode to your partner’s armpit sweat? An elegy for a vibrator that’s run out of batteries? In sex and poetry and poetry about sex, the possibilities seem endless.

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Evelyn Berry is a trans, Southern writer, editor, and educator. She’s the author of Grief Slut (Sundress Publications, 2024) and recipient of a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina.