Simon Perchik

*
You wipe one stain against another
reminding this napkin start storing fat
for winter and the night ahead

 ̶ a quiet swipe, simple so its edges
slow down, are dozing off
already dreaming about a mouth

getting ready and your wife alive
again baking your favorite cake
the one with layers to keep it warm

for the soft smells helping you eat alone
what could be icing or between your fingers
her dress, once it's unfolded, spreads out

on this table getting ready to snow
is watching you eat from a shovel
left on the ground taking root in the cold.

*
Branch to branch a snow
has already covered the sky
that could no longer hold on

lets you become an acrobat
grab each summersault
from a handle half wood, half

the moment when it shoves
a small boat into open seas
̶ you are saved by rope

as the chance to be water again
and for a split second
your shoulder brushes  against the ground

pulls in its arms, turns cold
and with one leap slips through
hears your feet gathering around you.

 

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.