Meeting

by Peter Mitchell

I was a silhouette
in the backroom of The Pleasure Chest.*
 
You blue-blurred past the glory hole.
 
I recognised you.
(For some years, I had drunk
your image down.)
 
                    I followed you;
                    I kneeled by the hole
 
in the wall.
 
You were a profile
          on the other side,
          your navy-blue King Gee shorts
          fire-water to my need.
 
                    Your glory-stick bloomed in my mouth
                    like a flame-red rose.
 
Your prisoner, I stumbled dim
corridors to the cubicles at the back.
 
          Your fingers, made for piano keys, pressed
          my shoulders, the dusty floor
          my altar again.
 
The thickness of your signature
charmed my body.
 
                    At dinner, you whispered
                              You're eminently fuckable.

​*‘The Pleasure Chest’: The Pleasure Chest is a sex-on-premises venue in lower George Street, Sydney.

Peter Mitchell is a queer writer living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in regional New South Wales, The author of the poetry chapbooks, Conspiracy of Skin (Ginninderra Press, 2018) and The Scarlet Moment (Picaro Press, 2009), they write poetry, memoir, short fiction, essays and literary criticism. Conspiracy of Skin was awarded a Highly Commended in the 2019 Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry. His website is at www.peter-mitchell.com.au.