i like my body when it is with your

i like my body when it is with your: analysis

Introduction

"i like my body when it is with your" is a frank love poem about sex. The speaker lists what is enjoyable about a lover's body and about what that body does to the speaker's own.

The poem's main word is the mild verb "like", repeated again and again against some very physical detail. Its language loosens as it goes, breaking down and leaving things unnamed. It has the length of a sonnet, but it ends on an unpunctuated line about the thrill of a new lover.

Summary

The speaker likes "my body when it is with your", and the sentence runs over into "body" on line 2. Together, the speaker says, it is something entirely new, with muscles and nerves improved. The liking moves to the other body, to what it does and to "its hows". The speaker likes feeling its spine and bones, and promises to kiss it "again and again and again". Then come "shocking fuzz" and "electric fur", and an unnamed "what-is-it" that comes over "parting flesh". The stanza stops on eyes called "big love-crumbs".

A single line stands apart from the long stanza above it. The speaker adds "and possibly i like the thrill". The sentence is not finished, and white space follows it. It is the only place in the poem where the liking is qualified.

The last line completes the sentence on a line of its own. The thrill is of having the lover "under me", a lover still very new to the speaker. The word "new" comes back from line 2, and "quite" comes back with it. The poem ends with no full stop.

Themes and meaning

Another person's body changes how your own body feels. The poem begins with "my body", not the lover's, and the opening sentence cannot finish until "your" crosses the line break to "body". The clipped "Muscles better and nerves more" reports the change like a physical fact. Self and other are joined by the grammar before anything else happens.

Newness frames the poem. Line 2 says the experience is new, and line 14 ends on the same word. Between those two points, the lover is explored as if for the first time. The repeated "again and again and again" shows the wish to keep something new from wearing off. The last lines admit that novelty itself is part of the pleasure.

Desire here works through touch and detail, not through grand statements. The speaker knows the lover by spine, bones, fuzz and fur. The word "love" appears only once, inside the odd compound "love-crumbs". The steady verb is "like", and it asks to be taken at more than face value. Its plainness keeps the poem from solemn declarations, and the understatement gives the physical details their force.

Language starts to fail as pleasure rises. Early lines are complete sentences, while later ones lean on "this and that" and "what-is-it". The dots on line 12 come straight after "what-is-it comes / over parting flesh", where "comes" carries its sexual sense. This can be read as words failing at climax, and the poem leaves that gap on the page.

Tone

The speaker sounds delighted, unembarrassed and a little amused. Line 2 reports the newness with a childlike surprise. The repeated "i like" gives the poem the sound of someone counting pleasures aloud.

The tone grows more urgent in the middle lines. Commas interrupt the phrase about "slowly stroking" the lover's "shocking fuzz", and the speech seems to catch its breath. The dots on line 12 go further and suspend speech altogether.

The end turns playful. After all this evidence, "possibly" is a joke, a mock-shy shrug. The final line is the bluntest in the poem, but its scrambled word order keeps it tender and slightly dazed.

Form and structure

The poem has 14 lines, the length of a sonnet, in 3 stanzas of 12, 1 and 1 lines. Syllable counts run from 7 to 11. Some lines, such as line 1 and line 5, are exact iambic pentameter. Others loosen around that pattern.

The last two lines shorten to 8 syllables each and read as iambic tetrameter. The rhymes are scattered and easy to miss, yet every line has a partner, as a sonnet's should. Line 1 pairs with line 3, line 2 with line 6, line 4 with line 10, and line 11 with line 12. There is a near rhyme of "spine" and "again". Line 7 waits for line 13, and line 9 waits for line 14. So the separated last lines complete rhymes begun much earlier, and the end feels both detached and tied back.

Poetic devices

Enjambment line 1

i like my body when it is with your The line ends on a possessive with no noun, so the reader must cross the break to reach "body". The break performs the joining the sentence describes.

Ellipsis line 3

Muscles better and nerves more The line strips out almost all grammar. It works like a shorthand report from the body, and it leaves "nerves more" for the reader to complete.

Anaphora line 5

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine The repeated opening builds a list that keeps growing. Its simple rhythm holds together details that become less and less simple.

Anthimeria line 5

its hows An adverb is turned into a plural noun. The lover's manner of doing things becomes a set of objects the speaker can admire one by one.

Compound word line 7

-firm-smooth The compound starts at "trembling" and crosses the line break. The hyphens make the reader feel the texture slowly, one quality at a time.

Repetition line 8

again and again and again The phrase delays the verb "kiss" until the next line. The delay and the rhythm enact the repeated action being promised.

Euphemism line 9

this and that of you The vague phrase declines to name body parts while plainly meaning them. It is coy, and the coyness adds to the intimacy.

Sibilance line 10

slowly stroking The repeated s sounds slow the line down. The odd comma after "the" then makes a small jolt before "shocking".

Metaphor line 11

electric fur Body hair is imagined as an animal's coat charged with current. The image joins softness to shock, and it extends "shocking" from the line before.

Coinage line 11

what-is-it The speaker will not name what comes. The hyphens turn that failure of language into a thing, and "comes" beside it carries its sexual sense.

Metaphor line 12

big love-crumbs The eyes are pictured as leftovers of love, small remains of a feast. The image is strange and tender.

Understatement line 13

and possibly i like the thrill After a dozen lines of evidence, "possibly" cannot be meant seriously. The hedge makes the closing admission sound shy and teasing at once.

Words worth knowing

better

Most easily read as short for muscles are better, with nerves more alive. It can also be a verb: muscles improve.

hows

A made-up plural noun meaning ways or manners of doing things.

fuzz

Fine body hair, called "fur" in the next line. In a poem this frank, it reads as pubic hair.

love-crumbs

A coinage. It suggests small tender remains of love, seen in the lover's eyes.

What readers have said

• Emma singles out "Muscles better and nerves more" as an example of how candid and loving it is to put feelings of love and lust into simple words. Emma, 2005
• Wayne calls the poem beautiful, and jokes that it is perhaps a little outdated because it seems to him to describe the missionary position. Wayne, 2005
• jeanne answers Wayne that "under me" need not mean that position or a man speaking. A woman can say it too, she says, and poetry is for everyone. jeanne, 2005
• Amy says it sums up the first time with a new lover. Amy, 2006