Five Poems
Simon Perchik
You come here to heat your eyes
hide their venom though the dirt
stays in striking range
as shade, lets you taunt the stones
not yet immune to tears and the stare
mourners start fires with –no stone
is safe and further down
slithers across your hands, both hands
to carry some small prey
letting the poison cool, taste
from mouths that remembers nothing
about how warm the cheek was.
* * *
To remind these dead –this rock
was once their only word
though now no one can hear it
–they too have forgotten
where nothing had a name
let the place do all the talking
–it was a time for breaking in
and breaking out –the weakest breath
learned to tremble from the weight
piece by piece deep inside
the bone that is your throat
–this endless sound worn smooth
knows nothing about the others
was left here to harden, try again,
higher, tastes from kisses and edges.
* * *
This comb stretching out
is dragged across your brain
the way a butterfly migrates
–the same side to side
fixed in its wings as a place
it has never been before
though under the mirror a sea
follows you from the beginning
with weeks at a time, surfaces
for the waves it left behind
–by the thousands, impaled
on some vague wind just now
flickering on your forehead
as the hair that’s kept in water
for directions and a leaving.
* * *
Though your shadow carries names
its scent is falling off, luring piece by piece
the stone it needs for nourishment
–you hoodwink these dead, stand here
the way each hillside reaches out
with the wooden carts that go on wobbling
as if they once had wheels, circled slowly down
smelling from fresh cut lumber and warm soup
–it works! Your shadow has always found room
for you, for the creaking inside these low trees
that grow only a darkness not yet the bloom
by itself giving back so many years later.
* * *
Don’t you believe it! to be continued
distracts from the front page
brushing against some hearse
wants more time –this newspaper
is opened then wider as if the rattle
could be heard though you sleep
a lot, sitting in a chair half wood
half the way a bell will practice
till its stance feels right
though you are the only one
listening in some great hall, your arms
folded as if they were not yet lost.
Poems by Simon Perchik have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and in E·ratio 19. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems (Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020). Simon Perchik is online at SimonPerchik.com.
