Poem By SIMON PERCHIK

Poem By SIMON PERCHIK

*

So you let the water boil

as if you were not yet born

and already breathing it

can barely make out the bubbles

burdened by sunlight

the way some ancient sea

struggles inside, hangs on to bells

–it’s a battered pot, beaten

and the dead who still ask why reefs

are needed now that your throat

is so heavy from cup after cup

and the few tears left over

for a single heart that would become

yours, is floating toward you

emptied for shade and piece by piece.

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.