Poem By SIMON PERCHIK
*
Louder! though what comes by
has already withered
and along a certain curve
your voice tapers off
as the path bent over her shoulders
spreading its flow into sunlight
now riverbank and whisper
–you need two mouths
now that every splash
smells from stones
once it rises to the surface
in that slow climbing turn
covered with winter
and her name just beginning
–yell it! face the sky
still pinned to her grave
and by the handful each breath
half closed, half more dirt.
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, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.