Chitra Ganesh, To Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
*
Not just for winter the sky
carries off everything in its path
—place to place broken off
as if these small stones are sure
the dead will wait for them
though they remember
only distances with no one
to look through the ice
at the birds frozen midair
still expecting your arms
to loosen inch by inch
from among the others.
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)