*
Each night this necklace cools
till its fever smells from silk
covers the dirt with buttons
and sleeves helping you reach
for a stone small enough to swallow
though it’s her mouth that’s lifted
that stakes everything on a single rock
for shoreline –just like that! a tiny pill
taken with water and you find yourself
bent over for ballast, not moving
not even for the lips rising inside you
making room for the emptiness
beginning its climb as another hillside
–at the top an old wall
cold corners, the room kept open..
*
It was a needless rinse, this bowl
half wood, half smelling from wood
that’s been taken away, trembling
as if today will be its last
though you gather up the spoon
holding it close and your arm
keeps it warm, covered with a stream
beginning to root as the emptiness
you lift to your lips without trying.
*
This tattoo once had the courage, a rose
surrounded by summer evenings and skin
that remembers how warm the name was
–what’s left is covered with the forever
growing on your arm as the voice
belonging to a dead woman making room
for an immense sea, silencing the Earth
from outside –here, was a shoulder
here, her lips –here the dress
becomes too heavy, falls into you
as driftwood –here was the heart, naked
beginning to snow –here was the sleeve.
*
This spoon all night on tiptoe
listening for the careless splash
that will never make it back –the cup
half hazelnut, black, half filled
so its prey can be tracked in the dark
the way one mouth finds another
feeds on the voice that can’t escape
–hour after hour being eaten
by the silence longing for the light
though even with the walls in place
even with her hands over your eyes
begging you from behind Guess who
you are circling the room, flying blind
spread-eagle, can hear the You
no longer moving between your teeth.
*
You bask beside her comb
the way a bullfighter is trained
emptying each blade and afternoons
that come over you as the flourish
more beautiful than a woman’s breath
suddenly there –now is the time
for the lunge her breast makes
when touched in the dark, refreshed
though there are no braids left
only her death hidden under your sleeve
that belongs in stone
as if what it holds is never enough.
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 and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.