Poem By SIMON PERCHIK
*
So you let the water boil
as if you were not yet born
and already breathing it
can barely make out the bubbles
burdened by sunlight
the way some ancient sea
struggles inside, hangs on to bells
–it’s a battered pot, beaten
and the dead who still ask why reefs
are needed now that your throat
is so heavy from cup after cup
and the few tears left over
for a single heart that would become
yours, is floating toward you
emptied for shade and piece by piece.
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.