November 2014
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
F I V E U N T I T L E D P O E M S
Although the stove never moves
you add on the way roots
have learned to sleep
where it’s warm – this kitchen
is still expanding, the pots
further apart with no end to it
can already set your hands
on fire – what you touch
are the stars pulling one wall
from the others, boiling
in a darkness that is not water
and slowly they reach the floor
the way light will lower its speed
pace itself so when it finally arrives
you hear nothing but its soft cry
no longer distances – what you extend
is the same heat your arms
are made from, wider and wider
held in place as if the sun
has forgotten how and withers
side by side, too cold, too small.
Holding on to the others this hillside
knows what it is to live alone
all these years falling off-center
though you no longer follow
still back away till your hands
and the dirt once it’s empty
both weigh the same – a small stone
can even things out
the way this casket on each end
leans toward shoreline, smells
from a sky unable to take root
or balance the Earth, half
with no one to talk to, half
just by moving closer – what you trim
floats off as that embrace all stone
is born with, covered
till nothing moves inside
except the lowering that drains forever.
There’s still a chance, sit
so you can’t see the tunnel
fanning out behind you and the sky
that knows so much about it
lowers this train to the ground
still falling back, tormented
by something overdue, the seat
half firewall, half
some hollow mound moving away
without the others, high above
the evening you are looking for
though you turn your back
the way your eyelids are used to the dark
at home in your hands, no longer
uncertain when to close and grieve
– all these years reflected in the night
your face gives off, clouded over
with glass, holding on, sleepless
– arrive unexpected! grown over
with weeds, with the hidden mountainside
around your shoulders and emptiness.
Once into the turn it spirals up
as if your lips are clouding over
breaking free from your face
the way the ground allows a hole
to rise, spills out its shadow
without any darkness
– it’s just a donut, a trace
though the sugar too is cold
dangerous, flying up-side-down
sleepless and in the far off snow
that remembers you, reaches across
tries not to promise you anything.
Though it’s familiar this flower
doesn’t recognize the breeze
wriggling out the ground
as that distance without any footsteps
– its petals have no memory left
no scent that can expand into mist
prowling for more darkness
the way moonlight tries to remember
once passing through the Earth
on all fours, sniffing for stones
hidden from where your fingers
will clasp each other sideways
and the dirt still close by
–will smother all that happened
has no past, means nothing now.
©2014 Simon Perchik