Poem By SIMON PERCHIK

Poem By SIMON PERCHIK

*

Louder! though what comes by

has already withered

and along a certain curve

your voice tapers off

as the path bent over her shoulders

spreading its flow into sunlight

now riverbank and whisper

–you need two mouths

now that every splash

smells from stones

once it rises to the surface

in that slow climbing turn

covered with winter

and her name just beginning

–yell it! face the sky

still pinned to her grave

and by the handful each breath

half closed, half more dirt.

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.