*
Simon Perchik
As if this tie could slow your fall
—full blown and yet each sleeve
expects the helpless rollover and flames
though your heart knows so little
about how chancy it is to breathe
spewing smoke no longer sea-blue
or dry —all that’s left in this shirt
is the surrounding valley
that carries you down —you need more sky
and side to side stretching out
for a rickety bridge —you jump holding on
to a single knot huddled in fog and off course.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Osiris, 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.