*
and the night too is homeless
following -every minute spent
stomping, setting traps :each footstep
and near a window
its small whisper lights up
lures the darkness closer
-they learn to limp, grind one shoe
catching fire -they're taught
to lag, leaning against
as a child just born
reaches ahead for lips
not sure who is breathing
-they will strike one leg
till its wings fall out, the ground
falling out, covered with footsteps
with galaxies and mornings to come
-all this emptiness taking hold
compacting the once a nothing spore
and the Earth already off balance
-they make themselves cold.
Who imagines a first cry
could grow into such a darkness
-from one vague window
all the winters :all this wandering
to touch what was a whisper
and now invisible, bending into sunlight
and goes on singing.
*
Even across a table
the separated miles
-everything I touch becomes dark
becomes stars
and struggling through the Earth
in time for evening.
I can hear the names
-they never give up
and through this table
is moving closer
-I don't answer the dead
but my eyes ache from gusts
homeward into a withered tree
a falling in the dark
and under my arms
the light almost green, almost here.
*
The rug, the chair, the rusted bedframe
keep this yard warm
--it could just as well be a bus
be that mountain
letting through the stranded
the scattered, the roadway
and never closed --the lopsided table
the rotting, the snow
that wants so little care
that climbs so easily
has its family's slope
small trees and falling rocks
--pick up a rock, any rock
feel how slowly it begins to heat
as if the mountain was thinking it over
might close after all
and this yard --there won't be time
--your breath frozen in mid-air
--what you tried to scream
will point to where your hand once was
where the snow was and over your eyes.
*
This radio loose, its voice
aroused at night :the static
impatient --there's no face
no arms, no breasts --all I see
is the climbing turn
for stars and that fleece lined jacket
filling with light
drifts into another evening
--the song widens, tightens
--all those stars at once
to come when told, the sky
led forward by a fire it never sees
a voice and rapture, its face
devoured, no lips, no thighs
--what's left is what's blue
is the way I sing along
half frozen --without the jacket
holding on to my hand.
*
This loaf and one more bone :the crust
must sense how its flesh
smells sweeter than butter --days too
harden when left alone, they need
a cutting board, a knife
helps them remember, work
the marrow --tears too :the crumbs
I keep finding in my shoes
--even on its side this blade
--from such a petal till my cheeks
covered with pollen, with mid-day
and pebbles :a spray taking root
opened for flowers, for the lips
--this loaf heated again, filled
with hands and knees, ready to come back.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Family of Man (Pavement Saw Press) is scheduled for Fall 2009. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website HERE.
