With a sudden glow one leg
begins to bend though your heart
creaks, each step growing sunlight
from rocks the way mountains
flower just by breaking apart
though inside nothing moves
waits to brush against these dead
—they know what happened
write down the place, have the lock
and you walk by as the same few days
or weeks or now and then
a put-aside-half shows up
just for the view, slowly, as if you
are no longer alive, left as you were
face to face for a long time.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, AGNI, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. (updated 4/2016)