Simon Perchik

*

Yes, bones do have a cry
though what you hear is a bird
lost, airsick, on the ground

where your ankle comforts it
with the warm blanket asylums use
to cushion the mad with screams

and weighs almost nothing
yet the doctor says in time the pain
will disappear and you won’t hear

whatever wind there is, calling
from inside the dead for more
over and over :a small beginning.



*

From a single finger
suddenly warm –you point
and the ground again accused

waits for the usual direction
only darker –a black spot
holding back its shadow

and these stones
standing before you now
as witnesses, broken off

though the sun no longer
wants their windblown cries
returned –this grave

began your name in the open
–the flight all Earth remembers
with footsteps and crawling.


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, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities”. Please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Current Issue:
June 2014

Taylor Emily Copeland
Steve DeFrance
Mitchell Grabois
John Grey
Richard Luftig
Mary McCall
Simon Perchik
Tim Pilgrim
April Salzano

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