Courtney Queeney: “The Other Woman”

THE OTHER WOMAN

When he wandered from the room
I imagined he’d been kidnapped.

What kind of ransom would I rally
for his rescue? Kidnapped,

or on the phone with his girlfriend.
How would I grieve? I watched TV

until he slouched back into the couch,
where we stared at a building

exploding. At some point he said
I always thought we’d end up together,

the screen’s blue light almost pretty,
almost like clouds tatting temporary

shadows across his face in a park, where maybe
we were staging a picnic, and not the glare

of the skyscraper shrugging into rubble.
It was such a bizarre thing to say.

Courtney Queeney’s book Filibuster to Delay a Kiss was published by Random House in 2007. Her work has been published by American Poetry Review, the American Poetry Society of America’s Poem-a-Day series, The Believer, Black Warrior Review, McSweeney’s, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New York Times, as well as other journals and anthologies.

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