Poems by Simon Perchik

No longer side to side your shadow
knows all about how a magician
waves one hand and slowly it becomes

a wrecking ball then all at once
there's a wall where you used to be
 ̶ you're dead and yet its stone

is half iron, half the same shovel
that shattered the Earth
and though you are listening

there's no letting go, each piece
is silent as it leaves a hole
where there was none before.

 

*
Both feet knee deep, powerless
 ̶ this sea was once a compass, solid iron
enraged by the primordial night

taking so long to point
as the first shadow on Earth
though you don't move, were lowered

the way the tide already knows
each leg will be returned , no longer lost
one beside the other, unable to live apart.

 

*
Without a sound these eggs
were boiling minutes ago  ̶ it's a ritual
from a time two suns warmed the Earth

one behind the other the way you dead
still rely on rows, cover your eyes
when winter changes into winter

 ̶ you eat with both hands now
as if you could hold on
be pulled out the ground

with these odd shaped seeds
no longer growing wings, turns
and so much weeping.