Two Poems by Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik

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

Her ankle needs adjustments, puddles
for runoff :tectonic coasts
and one shove more
 
–she hasn't time to explain
though the splash is almost invisible
already summer the way each wave
 
migrates mile after mile and back
–with just a leg she detonates the place
for membranes and her reflection
 
till it erupts again, tilts the sun
sideways and around her glistening heel
just below the surface where the sky
 
somersaults from joy and expectation
as if every rock that never made shore
could be lifted in her arms
 
already singing again and her stride
touching down on mountain streams
–only water can understand this
 
broken in pieces :the path
for continents, for step by step
falling through the Earth.

 

 

 

You lean against the way each evening
fills this sink waist-deep
though the dirt smells from seaweed
 
and graveyard marble –the splash
worn down, one faucet abandoned
the other gathers branches
 
from just stone and rainfall
–by morning these leaves
will lift a hand to your face
 
–you drain the weatherbeaten
the mouthfuls and slowly the mud
caresses your throat –you go
 
shaved and the gravel path
sticks to your skin, flowing
half shovel, half trembling.