Simon Perchik's Poetry

Simon Perchik's poetry has also appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.

*

Blurred yet something with wings

tucked in its eggs and your skin

swollen for a single cry

 

to feed on a morning close by

with a warm bowl held out

dripping the way flowers

 

still blossom in pain

careful not to leave the ground

                        –it could have been

 

some hillside, after a long flight

carrying your arm as a stronghold

for rain not yet dying down

 

between strangers and shelter

–it happened so fast

there’s nothing left to pull back.

 

 

  

*

This door slams easily now

though in the dark

it remembers more

 

reaches around and the rain

returned to you as lips

pressed together

 

weighs almost nothing

keeps both these hinges

from drying the way a deathwatch

 

night after night anchors

against the splash

and makes from your hand

 

a mask to ward off the Earth

tightening around your cheeks

two shadows, two mouths.

  

 

 

*

To lower this stream its rope

snaps though the Earth

is starting up again

 

as the small stone

you won’t let cool

keep adding more

 

and the few sparks it needs

to heat this grave with half

–don’t ask its age, the knot

 

has nothing to hold together now

lets you deepen this gorge

                        the way each footstep is sure

 

depends on the silence

leaching from this stone

already in a row, had to be done.

 

  

 

*

You weed the way these two lions

were carved, half strong box

half where the graves

 

are kept safe so step by step

you can count the names

taking hold place to place

 

the only Deed left

that will never have a home

–these cornered beasts

 

outnumber you –just to start

though your fingers spend their time

heated over a small stone

 

could calm these dead

and the tall wet grass struggling

not yet the riverbank they need.

  

 

*

It’s a meal, your elbows

crawling the way this soap

is shaped by salt

 

though she still believes

the water stays young

by letting you touch it

 

washing her shoulders

with undersea prairies

as if an arm so old

 

could still reach out

make room in her breasts

for nourishment

 

and already your fingers

smell from saliva

and empty riverbeds

 

kept wet for these wrinkles

taking away her cheeks

her legs and agony.