Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Eavesdropping on Adam and Eve
by Andrea Cohen
It didn’t get interesting
until after they’d left.
An extended vacation,
Adam called it. R&
D, Eve said. Whatever.
In Eden, they never
said so much as
pass the salt on
account of everything
tasting so great there.
They were strangers
until they left, when
Adam confessed, I
felt penned in there,
and Eve, forgetting how
naked they’d been,
said, I was always
waiting for the other
shoe to drop. Now
they’re both cobblers, now
they have so much
to talk about: whether
to spring for heat
or vaccines, whether
to call their interiors
climate or weather,
when the next ice age
might hit. Adam pours
himself another
hieroglyph and asks:
what does it all mean?
and Eve does what
she always does:
wraps herself, boa-
like, around him and holds
the camera an arm’s
length above for a
this is us moment
for the snake they
miss so much.
Copyright © 2020 by Andrea Cohen. Used with the permission of the author. Originally published in Copper Nickel.
About the Author
Andrea Cohen‘s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her most recent poetry collections are Everything, Nightshade, and Unfathoming. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA. For more: andreacohen.org
2021 Queer Poem a Day
- Day 1: Pride Month by Shelley Wong
- Day 2: Is This or Is This True as Happiness by Derrick Austin
- Day 3: Nature Poem by Sam Herschel Wein
- Day 4: Ana I Don’t Forget by Gala Mukomolova
- Day 5: Eavesdropping on Adam and Eve by Andrea Cohen
- Day 6: Billow of Thistles by Ruben Quesada
- Day 7: Prayer for My Trans Siblings by H. Melt
- Day 8: Summer by Chen Chen
- Day 9: Embers by Henri Cole
- Day 10: Male Beauty by Richie Hofmann
- Day 11: [unsent draft] by Rachel Mennies
- Day 12: Forty by Julia Guez
- Day 13: Of Contour, of Cadence by Phillip B. Williams
- Day 14: The Men We Loved by Cyril Wong
- Day 15: Riding the Bus Back to Oxford by Catherine Pond
- Day 16: The Window by Jay Besemer
- Day 17: Want Could Kill Me by Xandria Phillips
- Day 18: What a Waste by Jill McDonough
- Day 19: Eros by Randall Mann
- Day 20: An Act by Michael M. Weinstein
- Day 21: Things I Didn’t Do With this Body and Things I Did by Amanda Gunn
- Day 22: Puzzle Pieces by D. A. Powell
- Day 23: Duplicity by Jameson Fitzpatrick
- Day 24: Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors by Carl Phillips
- Day 25: High School Sleepovers with Straight Girls by Julian Guy
- Day 26: Abu Nuwas by Kazim Ali
- Day 27: Observation Car by Lauren Clark
- Day 28: Love Song by Eileen Myles
- Day 29: Donuts by Dan Kraines
- Day 30: The Lone Palm by Jenny Johnson
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this second year of our series is the first movement, Schéhérazade, from Masques, Op. 34, by Karol Szymanowski, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
