| this is oh so blue A MAGAZINE OF FICTION, POETRY & MORE! |
| black |
| this is black shadow |
| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ISSUE #34 $O.OO |
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| March 2005 |
| ___________ |
| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Jane Adam: I started writing poetry a few years ago in a moment of desperation. I got surprisingly decent results, so I kept at it. My poems now appear in The Beat, Remark, Spent Meat, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, and Slipstream, whose editors nominated me for a Pushcart Prize in 2003. I've lived in Buffalo, NY since 1981, and I've taught freshman English at nearly every college in the area since then. |
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| © 2005 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
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| NOT THE FIRST TIME |
| by Jane Adam |
| he had thought it might help
the heartache, the cold in him, squeezing its dry metal taste up into his mouth so he’d brought her over now, they sat on the couch side by side looking straight ahead not talking anymore he’d told her what he was supposed to tell her but then she had asked to hold his hand and he noticed it was the warmest thing anywhere around him her tender thumb moved, reminding him his home was empty of living things just now but for houseplants, cats and her-- all wet leaves and fur he brushed her face until her mouth opened for him the next time he looked up a pothos plant, the devil’s ivy, was springing up out of her head and a cat was hanging by its claws from the back of the couch to smell her hair she started to say something then but he slid his fingers between her wet leaves she came too loudly, with religious exclamations “oh jesus, god” she took her turn to kneel between his feet seeming to smell his dick first maybe it still smelled of pussy—too bad about that: his unwashed grief she swallowed him, pussy or not, and he said his prayer: “shit...fuck”—the ache, supposing it had ever left, was back now squeezing him until he wondered if he’d ever inhale again he did, then pulled up his pants and poured them both whiskey. she clinked his glass with hers, too merrily so he said, “this can’t be your first time” “first time what?” she asked— but then the phone rang his wife was calling from the store to make her own observation: “i’m losing my mind—i wrote down what size batteries to get for your clock then i forgot what i wrote it on” he heard store noise, babble and shopping carts, heard how it was light and warm there like her voice the phone in his hand the only warm thing now his world freeze-dried and shrunken so it fit inside this plastic receiver which had rescued him |