Anya Smith’s three-part sequence poem, “Mountain Messaged Erotica”, is narrative rife with outdoorsy rustic goodness and passion. Each scene shimmers with glorious natural imagery of mountains, ice, waters, and woods, but a sensuous tension is interwoven in the lines and in the story Anya offers in her poem.
Mountain Messaged Erotica 1 The mountains surrounded us, yet from the lake all was letters in lichen and strewn boulders bits and pieces in amongst the debris. Tenuously, as if they could trip me, I had navigated sharp edges and steep banks, to join you for nerves soothed in an alpine bath, and nothing, only the vague promise of the intimate magnified between narrow peaks of longing that called out for new growth, to the less discreet coarse ones beyond them, bringing these two who rambled through a valley, to a shared stream. 2 Waiting alone; blanket, pins and needles for a knock on a wooden door, for an axe and an outline through snow, blurred and twisting, then focused; dark hair, soft hands eyes flashing sparks and clouds, each touching the fibre, to move off cold smoke through many storms to a silence, each time only one stroke, each touch a fracture on a frozen sheet hammered against the glacial moraine, an ice age of skin in firelight, just waiting to melt. 3 Then in my truck, the backroad, thermos tea cup brewing one hand braced on a handle, I slipped against your lips placed hip-high, tumbling down the sides. We opened the door to the mountain again bent over, laughing in snow, chasing between tight trees, secret gullies, so that I could fly over banks before hard ground grabbing, dodging branches you slid across my favourite line, playing cold white light, when there was no one there, then everyone and line ups, hot underneath sweating layers we thawed again on a chair calling, though I couldn’t quite hear you, when you reached out your hand. I held it.

Anya Smith
Anya Smith has a life-long love of language and music. She finds deep bliss when words and rhythm cohabitate on the page. When not writing poetry and having her head in the clouds, she also enjoys reading voraciously, snowboarding, mountain biking and escaping with her dogs into nature.