local_library Untitled 2

by Simon Perchik

Published in Issue No. 246 ~ November, 2017

 

Open the lid! If you have to

use teeth: hailstones

left over from the winter making room

 

–inside the can

its paint spins backward

covers a rot that never leaves

 

and when the carpenters finish

rust –you stir till winds

begin to warm from the rain

 

brush against your arm

pulling the sun closer

firmly on the sill

 

–sometimes it takes all Spring

sometimes a few weeks, the air

little by little growing mold

 

worn out through the year

that has nothing to do with love opens

before you can catch your breath.

 

account_box More About

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.