SIMON PERCHIK / 5 POEMS
*
Slowly this coral
braces for the back and forth
by changing colors
beginning with moonlight—in time
the leaves become tea, gutted
the way an old woman with beads
weighs your palm for riverbeds
then spreads each finger
whose only memory is the darkness
that helps you breathe
underwater til it burns out
smells from emptiness
and standing in a circle while you drink
from a cup filled with some meadow
overgrown, forgotten, all at once.
*
Without the map you make a turn
the way someone pawns a coat
and butterflies disappear
though you remember the road
before it forked, became a valley
and the town, driving through
with the trunk propped open
helping you count over and over
to ten, half someone’s breath
half moonlight pressing against the hood
to open it, let out the wings, the road
and how much longer.
*
Don’t look around—it’s this conch
whispering back, keeping you awake
the way sailors embrace the stars
with rope when the rigging loosens
as the coming wave
falling to its death in your ear
—a nameless shell holds your hand
so it stays wet when lifted by moonlight
swollen from the darkness it needs
to flood the Earth, let go the railing
jump from the afternoons—you should look
for piling to carry away
on your shoulders as the voice
still circling overhead, almost a sea
almost all from your eyes.
*
You swallow head down
the way this hillside
sets for some far place
as evenings—it’s safe now
to drink from the birdbath
then throw your head back
purified by the pebbles
now gathered in a circle
as if they were the ones
you dead listen for
with your eyes closed
—in such a darkness
water becomes distance
finds the place in your mouth
for a field where a plane
skims by to cover you
as mist from its descent
still burning in the ground.
*
It was mindless gesture
greeting someone not there
though the cap still tilts
is falling behind as the gust
from passing sirens and bells
helps you close your eyes
where the brim from the inside
folds end over end
catches fire and over your forehead
cushions it with ashes the way a stone
softens another stone, moves it closer
wants it to press your mouth
against the evening and open it
for the darkness you bring
to loosen the earrings and sparks.
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 Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles, 2019. For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion, and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
To view one of his interviews please visit this link.