Simon Perchik
*
Already weightless these steps
don’t need the morning
back away as that emptiness
stars are used to
―you can hear them narrowing
creaking and from behind
wait for the sun to open fire
flash past your forehead
though you can’t make out
the week or year or the cloud
that knows you’re there
comes for you between more rain
and mountainside still standing
no longer growing grass
can’t love or remember
―you hide the way this attic
opens inside a door
that is not a flower
―an iron knob
that turns away nothing
and in your arms nothing, nothing.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his
website at www.simonperchik.com
Return to September 2013 Edition
Already weightless these steps
don’t need the morning
back away as that emptiness
stars are used to
―you can hear them narrowing
creaking and from behind
wait for the sun to open fire
flash past your forehead
though you can’t make out
the week or year or the cloud
that knows you’re there
comes for you between more rain
and mountainside still standing
no longer growing grass
can’t love or remember
―you hide the way this attic
opens inside a door
that is not a flower
―an iron knob
that turns away nothing
and in your arms nothing, nothing.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his
website at www.simonperchik.com
Return to September 2013 Edition