Simon Perchik
Two Poems
Cover Art: Marc Chagall, Aleko and Zemphira by Moonlight, Gouache and pencil on paper, 1942, MOMA
Two Poems
You grieve as if this shadow has no sound yet though once your face is covered you let more darkness out and what you hear stays, clots the way one hand clings to this dirt made black by the other, left behind to hide in the scent from rivers that move again, keeps you company years after as the cry for water and already this crater gouged from your mouth stone by stone, caving in and your lips boiling over. • • • You are pulled and the same darkness lifts your arm around these stars spreads out door to door knocks so your fist can smell from blood become your heart again dragged ahead as if you belong near distances, end to end though this cemetery has forgotten its dead holds only the invisible hillsides soaking in stone and narrow alleyways passed along till they close and what will be your tears waits as lips, as the sky brought back crumbling with not a light left on. |
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 Osiris Poems, published by box of chalk, 2017. 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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