Good Sex

Good sex stays with you - like that meal you'd
had alone in Chinatown in London once when
you were twenty: plenty of jasmine in the tea
and crispy duck on noodles, hacked with bones
impacted in the meat: limp greens assorting
themselves into tousled sheets; smells - vaguely

musky, sweet: you checked your shirt an hour later --
stained and crusty on the cuff; the taste of everything
remained when you touched it with your tongue -
which oddly, thirty-four long years après le fait --
that is, today -- you can recall as if you'd just
consumed it earlier this very evening: heightened

by a prick of grieving (it had frightened you back
then): so near that you can smell the sweat of it,
and feel the threat of it, just like at that dinner -
Chinatown in London - which you'd eaten, solo,
after meeting him, when you were younger. Amazing
how completely you can re-invoke your hunger.

Guy Kettelhack