Ode to Poetry: Other Women's Men

Not that I am the type to move in,

steal them away. Still, I can see why some women do, 

crossing legs on a bar stool, brightening

like the corner house that leaves

all their lights on: everyone knows



their kitchen walls are blue.
A flash of teeth or eyes that says

pay attention. All of us must hide

such hunger somewhere. Or, 

if we are certain he loves her, the thrill



that he finds us interesting,

not for what we might offer in the end:

his question about my childhood trip to Russia

genuine, that hand he lifts to his glasses,

rubs around his neck, not affect but pure gesture.

I would like to believe this, as I crush

the lime over my glass, not trying to sparkle but not

not. 

This story about the car

he rebuilt in high school-



but people are all affect, I think

and then must wait for sense

to catch up with his sound, 

so I can deliver the awaited response,

with some extra show to compensate.

The way the young men at church, 

newly married, avoid me or make 

great show of wedding bands, why, at a potluck,

one whose wife is gone to her sister's in Tucson,

when I sit beside him, becomes deeply

fascinated by his pecan pie.

Some puritanical sensibility that sees an impure thought

far down the road and crosses to the opposite sidewalk-

even if that thought in the end is nothing

but a trick of sunlight.

There was a time, if we believe the stories,

when men and women didn't know their nakedness.

The afternoon in that shared kitchen

when I asked Sarah's husband about Amarene:

cherries soaked in syrup and brandy from the Friday market

and he crossed the room, holding the little clay jar,

unlidded it and lifted one cherry on a spoon,

the red syrup pooling the spoon's bowl, 

and I opened my mouth to take

the bright fruit, closed my lips over the spoon,

only a moment, until a rat moved against a drain pipe

or I lifted a finger to wipe the syrup from my lip,

and we both saw how 

close we stood, and he 

turned quickly setting

he jar aside, to scour at

the coffee staining

the sink.

-Claire Mcquerry


Claire is an up and coming modern poet currently getting her PhD at University of Missouri. I have the good fortune of knowing her personally through our alma mater and my oldest brother, Paul, but did not know how wonderful her poetry was until 2 year ago when she came back to Gonzaga as a guest in the Visiting Writer's Workshop. She read this poem at her reading and I fell in love with it. It's still one of my favorite poems.