{"id":6659,"date":"2015-04-01T21:04:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T03:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6659"},"modified":"2015-04-01T21:04:08","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T03:04:08","slug":"conversational-distance","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/?page_id=6659","title":{"rendered":"Conversational Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gloria Heffernan<\/strong><\/p>\n

I concentrate on the cigarettes you flicked
\nout the window
\nwhen you refused the dish I handed you
\nin lieu of an ashtray.
\nYou seemed to think I would prefer
\nthe blast of cold night air
\nto the possibility of simply washing the dish,
\njust as you thought I would prefer
\nthe truth to lovely illusion.<\/p>\n

I imagine the cigarette butts landing on a stack of
\ndiscarded newspapers
\nin the alleyway six stories below,
\nthe glowing orange tips
\nboring holes through yesterday\u2019s news,
\nand smoldering for hours before bursting
\ninto a blaze that seems more bearable
\nthan the resentment I see smoldering
\nat the corners of your eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNext time,\u201d I promise,
\n\u201cI\u2019ll have a real ashtray waiting for you,
\nthe kind with little round indentations
\nto cradle the cigarettes securely
\nwhile the smoke curls up like
\na cobra emerging from a snake charmer\u2019s basket.\u201d
\nYou nod appreciatively
\nand we catch each other in the lie,
\nknowing there won\u2019t be a next time,
\nand it\u2019s high time you quit smoking anyway.<\/p>\n

GLORIA HEFFERNAN<\/strong> is a proud native of Jersey City, New Jersey. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Icarus<\/em>, Pleiades<\/em>, Radiance Magazine<\/em>, The Comstock Review<\/em>, Stone Canoe<\/em>, The Healing Muse<\/em>, Parody<\/em>, Grey Sparrow Journal<\/em> and the New York Times Metropolitan Diary<\/em>. She has also had articles and essays published in numerous magazines and journals including The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/em>, The Eugene O\u2019Neill Review<\/em>, Dramatist\u2019s Guild Quarterly<\/em>, and The Syracuse Post-Standard<\/em>. She holds a Master\u2019s Degree in English from New York University and teaches critical writing at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gloria Heffernan I concentrate on the cigarettes you flicked out the window when you refused the dish I handed you in lieu of an ashtray. You seemed to think I would prefer the blast of cold night air to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":6654,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6659","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P15duy-1Jp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6666,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6659\/revisions\/6666"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerseydevilpress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}