Poem – Gasping on air and salt… (By Simon Perchik)

 

Gasping on air and salt

and though you can hear the soup cool

an ocean deep inside the Earth

 

is bubbling under your skull

exhausted –it’s natural you wait

for the soup to grieve

 

louder and louder as if your arms

were coming too close –wave after wave

you scatter more salt

 

and across the bowl

that smells from rain in the beginning

–it’s expected that you have this appetite

 

for reef, for a sea with a bone in its mouth

and along the coast the dead fingers

the dead lips listening for yours

 

tired from struggling –only soup

and even then a wooden chair

so nothing is forgotten.

 

Author Bio:
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, including free e-books, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.