How Men Think of Women

A Poem by Kherry McKay

How Men Think of Women

Age ten it’s a princess in a castle dungeon
needing a brave conquistador to rescue her
(her and her St. Bernard sidekick).

At age fifteen she drives a muscle car and
uses too much baby oil when she tans.
At twenty, there are two of her, or maybe
it's her and her fortysomething mother.

Twenty-five: She’s acrobatic in bed
as well as at her day job at Cirque du Solei.
At his thirty, she likes to hold babies
and talk about them and play with his
member at night as if it were a baby spigot.

Thirty-five remembers things at twenty-five,
wonders what work she plied after Cirque du Solei.
At forty, he realizes for the first time
how damn sexy women are
with dark-rimmed glasses, reading a novel.

Forty-five: He likes one who likes obedient dogs
and wants to take Italian cooking classes.
Fifty: two things make him horny, her
audacious smile and when she spends less
than $300 at the grocery store.

At fifty-five it actually turns him on
to buy her new running clothes, tennis shoes.
Sixty: he wants her to kiss him in the movie
theater while they watch the end credits
of the foreign film: Kiss him hard, with verve.

When a man turns sixty-five he is back
to imagining her as a young woman with her
fortysomething mother. . . .

Seventy: She knows he doesn’t like pepper
on his salad. She makes it just as he likes it
so he finds it easy to hold her in the afternoons
as she wants to be held when they both
drowse on the sofa.

When a man makes seventy-five it’s about
her taking him seriously, as seriously
as she would, a thirty-five-year-old. After all,
he has dignity, a dignity which later at eighty

Propels him to find her in her castle
again, to slay the dragons, take
her into himself, crying how he knows her,
sobbing that she chose his weak conquistador act
those stippled eons ago.

Maybe at eighty-five he will take her out
in his muscle car
to the beach, spread baby oil over
her and himself,
thank her for being the only real woman
he would know.