Public Republic

Simon Perchik

Photo: yourbartender

You shave so the rain
can’t stop –twice every day
as if the sky were twins

half shoreless, half too heavy
and these rotary blades
reaching take-off speed

–you climb the way this mirror
fills with water, becomes some boy
shaking a tree, expects your hair

will drop safely in the sink
though Norelco claims the motor
runs even in a shower

–what does it know about rain
or accuracy or for hours
the absent-minded way your face

presses almost too close
dimmer, dimmer into that turn
there all the time on your cheeks

kept beardless: a light held back
at the far end where the runway
wants one from the few left to it.