*
You squint as if its cries could fit
and in the same pot this egg
lowered to the bottom –each wave
learns from the others just how much
end over end heats an inside
that has no shell, becomes a sea
overflows the way you dead are buried
embraced by a room filled with water
by walls built from wood and knots
and nails, has a door that opens up
whitewashed, sent out as daylight
all the time adding shoreline and salt.
*
Barely marble yet these tents
are pulled along the ground
by rope that needs more rope
not yet some high-wire act
for acrobats just learning to wave
while the crowd below
listens for rain already overgrown
with mold and longing, kept wet
by your step by step holding on
to the corners as if they
no longer want to be unfolded
and you could stop walking.
*
As if these gravestones were once a forest
between each there’s still the breeze
from wood and leaves and winter
though under your fingertips the initials
warm, are already stretching out
the way a beginner tree wants to be lit
then at its highest even in the cold
grows a small stone that will ripen
and stay red for the arrow
carved around two rivers and the heart
brought closer, smelling from the caress
that is not a blouse or its ashes.
*
Though the bed died during the night
this sheet is reaching for flowers
still warm from the last time they saw daylight
as one more hole in the Earth
–it’s for them you heat the room
with wood each morning heavier
breathing in the way you fill your arms
with sores no longer holding on
–this bed was left to die in the open
as the space between two pillows
that grieves with the ancient scent
cooling your lips among the ashes.
*
Even the night was made from wood
has sheets, a gown, the kind
brides wear only once
though you pace in front the bed
the way mathematicians mull over chalk
scraping it against something black
that could be pulling the room apart
with the faint sound from dust
coming by for what’s left
and the corners –vaguely you can hear
her lips breathing into yours
setting on fire the stars
that would sweeten your mouth
with the never ending hum
emptied from wells and springs
for smoke, no longer knows how to talk
how to glow when side by side
as planks and weeds and this pillow.
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 Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. 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.