SIMON PERCHIK - POEMS

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The B Poems published by Poets Wear Prada, 2016. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
 

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​*
These gravestones are shaped the way every avalanche
wants to enter the Earth –first as a single doorstep
then the rush though the rocks you listen for
 
are already moons helping you find the door
for holding on while the light under you
becomes another shadow made from wood
 
lays down as a room that cannot change its mind
is filled with cracked lips, the cold and end over end
the strong corners, the kisses that made it here.
 
 
 
*
For a few hours every night the floor
slows and the room cuts back
quieted, begins its descent
 
the way a dead lake is filled
with shoreline –the rug
is used to boards that stay wet
 
though it’s an iron bed
breaking in half where a pillow
once filled with seabirds
 
still clings to the other side
before it opens –it takes time
but the floor has to be washed
 
every night just to hear the dress
touching down, folding over the mop
the rotting wooden handle.
 
 
 
*
Your face is covered with paper now
held in place by its words for sky
and wind –a simple love note
 
can keep the rain away
let you read forever in the dark
though it tastes from the salt
 
still on your lips –all those years
soaking up this hillside
till nothing was left to open
 
except over your cheeks
you have all the air you need
in the corners not yet grass.
 
 
 
*
You sleep with the coat buttoned
and though your eyes are closing
the sleeves cling by listening
 
sure her favorite dress
is somewhere in this room
no longer morning, named
 
as if these walls once were stone
and what you hear
is losing speed, altitude –the bed
 
knows all about how an underground cave
stays open, kept trapped to survive
as a whisper not a whisper anymore.
 
 
*
You wait at a fence though the yard
no longer moves –all this air
and not one mouthful for these dead
 
left in the open where each leaf
is handed over as the loss
that was the one too many
 
and from the same gate, half wood
half kept open as those slow climbing turns
that never make it back, forget how
 
to fall from moonlight, make room
for more wood and these dead
feeling their way down hand over hand.