Simon Perchik

*
And who will lower the Earth
past its winters, deep and deeper
carry off the place the sun
once came to hear goodbye

to kiss where a mouth or a cheek
or the train whistles that fall
thin out behind each other
on and on with nothing but distances

and wind --not even a plume
or flying backwards into flames
as if an iron trestle could fan
a stone broken open to warm the dead

take in the whole sky
and who will kneel so the Earth
stops gathering --no air left
not even in those last words

let down :another tunnel
more darkness falling past the stars
and dirt pulling away from my lips
my arms, from my breath.



*
With one finger upright, a milky tang
against your lips, almost asleep
and this glass bottle adrift
between thunderous rocks
that call for help, shipwrecked

--you hold in place
directions, a note kept warm
under foam, under lost stones
dissolving --you drink

from an overcast suddenly turbulent
filled --one storm after another
taking you drop by drop

though I pat your back, push
to bring some light
and its listing shadow --this bottle

for hours held out the way a lantern
swings from its darkened mast
and you listen for me, this song
I carry in my arms, the one
about sleep and how the sky
is growing into a beautiful woman
who has your name.


*
As if these waves once were foliage
and this rain soaked in salt
expects winter without the usual change

--the anchor a desperate orange
waits for that same frost
a grove must sense when you empty it
barehanded, toss the severed heads
on a deck smelling from ladder and rust
and further on.

You almost reach
and the thin, exhausted snow
drowning so close to shore where your
fingers
overflow into the smell from dying roots
and branches

and nets, slowly at first
pretending to sink till suddenly
you pull the Earth from the sun's headwaters
--both hands and you point the Earth
the way all leaves are magnetic
always clustered, always dread

though they eat nothing but shadow
and direction and the wind
who's just as sure why north is buried
under a glacier half bird, half from memory

--it's easy to be lost in winter, the water
almost ice, the sky almost ice, the sun
almost ice and the boat listing
changing color in total silence
except the old iron keel
somewhere at the bottom must think it hears
birdsong and answers, keeps answering.


Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Rafts (Parsifal Editions) is his most recent collection. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at <www.geocities.com/simonthepoet>.

 Current Issue:
July 2008

Elizabeth Barbato
Kendall A. Bell
Matthew Byrne
Robert Demaree
Taylor Graham
Raud Kennedy
Simon Perchik
Bill Roberts
Tom Sheehan
John Sweet
Josh Thompson
J. Michael Wahlgren
Christian Ward
Lafayette Wattles

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