Untitled

by SIMON PERCHIK

                              Your death seemed a neat trick

                              the crowd shoulder to shoulder

                              and in the center, eyes closed

                              as if some dirt makes a difference

                              knows how the first shovel full

                              is already spreading out

                              as hillside, as galaxies and echo

                              —without any string a tiny stone

                              pulls you back hand over hand

                              is charged the way this iron-sharp magnet

                              empties the Earth

                              becomes a flower, shaped

                              not by some restless butterfly

                              but from your dress giving birth

                              every Spring, half mist

                              half some child running underwater

                              and all that's left is thirst

                              for someday or another.

SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.