*


Simon Perchik

 

Struggling against more turbulence

this broken concrete can’t shut down

and cool –your shadow’s too old

 

leans down and though the wall

falls closer and closer

it tries to rest your face

 

–a sleeping face

still circling where your forehead

mingles with rocks and weeds

 

–even your grave goes to pot

lets anyone point at it

as if sunlight could urge you

 

to spread out inside a sky

that has no days left, is lifted

face to face with the ground.

 

§

 

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

 

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