Simon Perchik
*
This comb stretching out
is dragged across your brain
the way a butterfly migrates
–the same side to side
fixed in its wings as a place
it has never been before
though under the mirror a sea
follows you from the beginning
with weeks at a time, surfaces
for the waves it left behind
–by the thousands, impaled
on some vague wind just now
flickering on your forehead
as the hair that’s kept in water
for directions and a leaving.
*
You come here to heat your eyes
hide their venom though the dirt
stays in striking range
as shade, lets you taunt the stones
not yet immune to tears and the stare
mourners start fires with –no stone
is safe and further down
slithers across your hands, both hands
to carry some small prey
letting the poison cool, taste
from mouths that remembers nothing
about how warm the cheek was.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is
The Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at
www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews please follow this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8.
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