Poem – Once this bedroom door is closed… (By Simon Perchik)

 

Once this bedroom door is closed the rug

deals in flowers, its dark scent

reaching up where your eyes

expect sunlight and miles away the heady whiff

from a firefly –already she’s naked

 

the woman you just this minute

inhaled, a deep breath

who can’t see, has to feel along the grass

though the dead still stake a claim

 

and never leave –the room is locked

with the fragrance stones come for

–it’s a little room

a place you keep for yourself

so the door can become the distance

that fastens her arms to yours

 

and you wait for the pathways

to fall inside your throat

as the cry for footsteps

filled with kisses and fingernails

 

and the rug torn apart for rags

smells from loneliness

from the mouth you will gently place

over her heart and time to time.

 

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