Simon Perchik is an American poet with published work dating from the 1960s. Perchik worked as an attorney before his retirement in 1980. Educated at New York University, Perchik now resides in East Hampton, New York. Library Journal has referred to Perchik as “the most widely published unknown poet in America.” Best known for his highly personal, non-narrative style of poetry, Perchik’s work has appeared in numerous books, websites, and print magazines, including The New Yorker, Partisan Review, Poetry, The Nation, North American Review, Weave Magazine, Beloit, and CLUTCH.

*
You fold your arms the way this pasture
gnaws on the wooden fence
left standing in water – make a raft

though it’s these rotting staves
side by side that set the Earth on fire
with smoke rising from the ponds

as emptiness and ice – you dead
are winter now, need more wood
to breathe and from a single finger

point, warmed with ashes and lips
no longer brittle – under you
a gate is opened for the cold

and though there’s no sea you drink
from your hands where all tears blacken
– you can see yourself in the flames.

*
You drink from this hole
as if it once was water
became a sky then wider

– without a scratch make room
for driftwood breaking loose
from an old love song in ashes

carried everywhere on foot
as that ocean in your chest
overflowing close to the mouth

that’s tired from saying goodbye
– you dig the way the Earth
is lifted for hillsides and lips

grasping at the heart buried here
still flickering in throats and beacons
that no longer recede – from so far

every word you say owes something
to a song that has nothing left, drips
from your mouth as salt and more salt.

*
Before this field blossomed
it was already scented
from fingers side by side

darkening the lines in your palm
the way glowing coals
once filled it with breasts

and everything nearby
was turned loose to warm the miles
the pebbles and stones brought back

pressed against her grave
– you heat the Earth with a blouse
that’s never leaving here.

*
These crumbs are from so many places
yet after every meal they ripen
sweeten in time for your fingertip

that shudders the way your mouth
was bloodied by kisses wrestling you down
with saliva and rumbling boulders – you sit

at a table and all over again see it
backing away as oceans, mountains
and on this darkness you wet your finger

to silence it though nothing comes to an end
– piece by piece, tiny and naked, they tremble
under your tongue and still sudden lightning.

*
It had an echo – this rock
lost its hold, waits on the ground
as the need for pieces

knows all about what’s left
when the Earth is hollowed out
for the sound a gravestone makes

struck by the days, months
returning as winter: the same chorus
these dead are gathered to hear

be roused from that ancient lament
it sings as far as it can
word for word to find them.