Public Republic

Simon Perchik

Photo: claire1066
No one gets hurt, you pump
into a parachute, cup one hand
to float down, the other
as if water could rub off
the way the sky still gushes
from the once blue Earth
and your sleeve tearing apart

Simon Perchik

Photo: JennyHuang
And you, licking this reef
the way herds are nourished
with salt –even your tongue
has a trace, bitter, brackish
stings though salt
is what keeps stone stone

Simon Perchik
Photo: Hamed Saber
Still, the Earth with so much hair
is just not strong enough, the sun
takes all the light it wants
and every morning you watch
the struggle, it ends
with the sun fattened
feeding her brood in the dark

Simon Perchik

Photo: zedzap
I listen the way bells
widen for petals :my fingers
climbing in a circle and the sky
I thought was lost –your lips
already wings, folded back
covered with rock cracking open
and the storm-drenched spark
means nothing.

Simon Perchik
Photo: Alejandra Mavrovski
Because there’s only one East
loneliness seems a natural, you sit
the way astronomers focus mirrors
and your radio all night
picking up moons, planets
old songs from the 40’s –your hand
never leaves the dial
even to brush away the dim light
fallen across the table.

Simon Perchik

Photo: Johan Larsson
Even in summer, long johns
and fleece-lined jackets
just in case — you drive across
though the silk scarf
already resembles the thinning air
this time without its wings

Simon Perchik

Photo: ` TheDreamSky
Waiting all afternoon the dark
is treated the way a parasite
dreads shells and emptiness
though a blue residue cools the sky
spreads out so its light everywhere
can run just so fast from the blindness
children still count on their hands

Simon Perchik

Photo: trialsanderrors
What you hear is one winter
to another, heads or tails
one side staggering
the other moving closer
though it will rain soon –midair
the way you clip some dazzling jewel
and your dress blossom
while you are still inside
covered with snow, the sun
half struggling, half underwater
toward the ice that will drink it all

Simon Perchik

Photo: qmnonic
…the final piece tonight… and the Earth
made whole –the announcer slows, signs off
by lowering her voice, then Mahler
to help her with the dead …will leave the air…
for its underworld and we be swept
over that silence, downstream, washed
in a darkness that stays, has no breath
or place to grow though by morning

Simon Perchik

Photo: jenny downing
At the end each dancer darkens
bends through somewhere shallow
and fronds floating on stage: the dam
can’t hold and we are left to swim
upstream, barely enough water
to remember where –the dancers
still clear, precise, scrambled
the way a nightmare must sense
how makeshift it is, weighs
almost nothing, not sure
which sleep will be its last

Simon Perchik

Photo: Clearly Ambiguous
And forgetting too comes easier
bending the Earth the way the old
learn to see in the dark –I lose count
to begin again, finger by empty finger
touching my lips, expecting
more silence though the baby
has no room to make an arch, to feel
the wind under one foot then the other

Simon Perchik

Photo: lepiaf.geo
As if from some hourglass this beach
slipped past last night, the wind
returning empty, its sand
laying motionless among the hours, one
more joyous than another, one more caring
one flying between these gulls
and even you are lonely

Simon Perchik

Photo: jimkster
A plain paper bag yet in its night
this popcorn needs more salt
– a fragrant grip and I am Hercules
muscle-bound, shaking the screen
the actors giants, grotesque