*

Song 01 by Amena Bandukwala. Image courtesy the artist.

*
Each night this necklace cools
till its fever smells from silk
covers the dirt with buttons

and sleeves helping you reach
for a stone small enough to swallow
though it’s her mouth that’s lifted

that stakes everything on a single rock
for shoreline –just like that! a tiny pill
taken with water and you find yourself

bent over for ballast, not moving
not even for the lips rising inside you
making room for the emptiness

beginning its climb as another hillside
–at the top an old wall
cold corners, the room kept open..

*
It was a needless rinse, this bowl
half wood, half smelling from wood
that’s been taken away, trembling

as if today will be its last
though you gather up the spoon
holding it close and your arm

keeps it warm, covered with a stream
beginning to root as the emptiness
you lift to your lips without trying.

*
This tattoo once had the courage, a rose
surrounded by summer evenings and skin
that remembers how warm the name was

–what’s left is covered with the forever
growing on your arm as the voice
belonging to a dead woman making room

for an immense sea, silencing the Earth
from outside –here, was a shoulder
here, her lips –here the dress

becomes too heavy, falls into you
as driftwood –here was the heart, naked
beginning to snow –here was the sleeve.

~ Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. More information, including free e-books, his essay titled ‘Magic, Illusion and Other Realities’ and a complete bibliography, can be found at his website.