"Sex without Love" is a poem about lust in society today and its acceptance. Olds creates a metaphor between lovers and athletes. This comparison constructs the allusion that lovers are like runners in which they have companions, but their companions are "the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, [and] their over-all cardio- vascular health." Sex without love is simply love without love. It is lust.
             "How do they do it, the ones who make love without love?" The speaker asks this question in order to set the tone of the poem. By asking this, Olds has the reader literally think about an answer. How is it that people can have sex without loving their partner? Decades ago something like this was completely unacceptable, but the speaker wants an answer to the question. How can someone "make love without love?" The speaker could be trying to convey a hint of irony in the message with "love without love". The separation of the phrase may have been done to craft a pause and create a feeling of hesitation to the question, as when one is afraid to ask something because they are afraid of the response for asking. You can not have love without love. The point is that there is no love, and this is expressed with facetiousness. No emotion, no care, just purely satisfying physical needs in order to perform the main purpose of any organism: to reproduce, or at least practice. This is where the speaker creates imagery of lovers, when we are told that the lovers are as "beautiful as dancers, [and that they glide] over each other like ice skaters over the ice," because it evokes images of grace, of a relationship, or practice beyond amateurism; it is a sport played many times before.
             Sharon Olds denotes a great amount of sexuality in her poem. This is unavoidable and is a great tool in personifying her message. When someone's "fingers [are] hooked inside&quo...