Pad Thai

 
I’ve had one or two
religious experiences at dinner tables,
ephemeral, brewing up inside me
like effervescent tea.
I was with Dan Smith at Aoeshi in North Olmsted
eating clear soup and flying fish roe,
what happened to that place?
It’s rare when food is good enough
to induce near catatonia in me……
 
…..mmmmmm…..sleep like this
don’t adulterate the body anymore,
this will be the last meal I eat
 
f
o
r
e
v
e
r
 
I don’t want it to end
when I walk down 25th Street
and slip into Phnom Penh
and slip into Pad Thai,
real Pad Thai
with chopped peanuts and scallions.
The dining room
it is long and spartan
with barely any customers
at six o clock Saturday night.
Ten years ago this place would have been packed to the gills,
but nowadays I can smell a dying restaurant from ten miles away,
the result of 15 years working in a string of them.
This place has the criteria:
Opened in Cleveland,
not owned by a man named “Mike Symon”
or “Applebee.”
So I stir at my noodles,
and wonder how well basil would play into all this,
into my life.
I would wrap tiny, lemony chicken and tarragon and shallot
inside leaves of fresh basil.
Instead, I am sipping on Jackfruit,
on the dreaded durian plant
and its legendary odor,
which is somewhere between
sweat socks, coconut
 
and ass