3 Poems by Simon Perchik

*

Once it heals these flowers
you feel its fragrance
smoothing your cheeks

though the journals are sure
dismiss your sores –it’s grief
that’s withering, eaten alive

as rainwater and marshland
inside a common love song
bringing up your knees

already airborne around you
and with your forehead
what happened happened.


* 

Whatever you soften it’s the dirt
that starts though your lips
touch down and try again

counting off the hours
just now learning to mimic
rain –in time

you will smooth the ground
better than before, for years
talking babytalk –have to

–this rain is not yet
what it wanted
and all the way down

you practice the way stones
are surrounded by dew
no longer whispers and places.


*

How you fold your hands, tin
is not what you can count on
for turns –off shore is still risky

though you squeeze this rim
the way seabirds are trained
would suddenly dip one wing

and with the other the soda
breaks apart as if your arms
were left in the open

and side to side could only guess
where you will find rest
and nothing else.


Bionote

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems published by box of chalk, 2017. For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.