Two Poems

*

Shielding your lips this stone

knows all about winds

living in caves, began

as dust then kept in place

neither mornings or kisses

though there’s still the pieces

a grave here, here more and you

trying to remember how dirt

became your cheeks, caressed

as if rain is just another word

–your only sky left in the open

for its handfuls and hidden flowers

that have forgotten how to breathe

are devouring the mud, mountains

and this ritual water swept away.

*

You no longer bathe

though a cold rain

flows through one arm

grieves the way each river

carries off its slow descent

with a deadly hold

–around these gravestones

your smelly leather jacket

still arranged so its sleeves

spread-eagle, are packed

with a sky already darkened

by the more and more feathers

that have no heading yet

and your shoulders without hope

weightless over the water.

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 boxofchalk, 2017. 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 follow this link.