Over the same spot these sleeves
clinging to grass as if a jacket
would scare off whatever flies
could reach around and your shoulders
that no longer take leather for granted
fall back though the zipper
is used to rain, rain then no rain
runs through fields not yet planted
or attacked or along some tree-lined lane
its harvest changing into those stones
mourners startle the dead with
step by step—from every direction
a safe place disguised as water
hiding inside your mouth, your arms
and nothing else to lay your head on.
–
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 Gibson Poems (Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019). For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website.