More Poetry By Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,

The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).  For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Simon Perchik

*
                         This bloom still reckless, its heat
breaking into the furious hum
bugs use for melting snow 

–there’s no interest in romance
though every winter now
is warmed, takes hold your hand

by brushing against the dirt
risks its place to lure you, naked
in front the house, her breasts

surrounded and across your tongue
a lingering darkness welcomes them
knows nothing why your fingers smell

from avalanche and salt
and never had that taste for sweets
moving mouth to mouth

snatching things up, louder and louder
certain this frost is frost, named
so soon after its birth and yours.


*
This cliff spreading out
and among the black stones
on all sides another rooftop

half marble, half while the city below
street by street catches fire
the way your still unopened lips

use what air is left though that’s
not how you remember it
when some mourner falls behind

and makes it out alive
already in a straight line
as if your arms are closing in

on what they say not to
and the rock you hold up
as the single-minded cry

coming from deep inside the sun
covers your mouth face down
to cool itself off, then louder.




*
Palms up, you’re used to winter
as the sound not yet these rocks
breaking off between one clearing

and the other –you already know
what’s to come, pull up
the way piece by piece still remembers

the first snow and now the Earth
keeps everything to itself
though what you lift is always cold

starting over, filling each stone
by hand, further and further
almost in two and frail.




*
Hopeless! you add more salt
the way another spoonful
rows you across, the spray

clouding over with shoreline
–this soup has to be heated again
spread out as if night after night

you need a bigger pot
already with its darkness
caked on to these stars coming by

so early –to the same place
and for a second time are trembling
cling without touching your face.

      


*
You reach into that darkness
stars return for, are cooled
and yet you open the mail

slowly so in each envelope
the letter folding over and over
still falls out as mist

covers the ground
almost to a boil –you retrace
the way the blind find shelter

and with just your fingertips
empty the small fire
hidden behind the others

waiting for its shadow
cut off from home
and at the slightest touch.