BIO
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,
The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
*
Without an address your hands
lean across –another crease
making the final correction
though this note still opens out
windblown, fingerprints
everywhere on her lips
on her breasts, on the bed sheet
folded and over, warmed
for its nakedness and side by side
–every word is already lost
and there at the bottom
where little blossoms should grow
there’s nothing but silence
and the long line for a stamp
to cling when it leaves your hands
as if even without the flowers
the corners will arrive as evenings
covered with dirt and her forehead.
*
What you open leans against wood
that is not a door you can muffle
put your arm around the only sound
when you knock on this kitchen table
whose corners were broken off
straight down, still lit, letting you in
circle her mouth not yet the room
left over and listen for the smoke
around the hush from small fires.
