Simon Perchik

[All but the splash is thickening]

All but the splash is thickening
half as marrow, half
feathers and long ago seas

share this pot with bones
dropped end over end
though they stay, are growing wings

the way mourners are overcome
by turbulence, lean into each other
–it’s a dark kitchen, barely room

for the talons that will stretch
are already flying side by side
as smoke reaching around the silence

all afternoon carrying the dead
though finally every bone becomes too heavy
from nothing inside but shoreline.

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Simon Perchik’s poetry has appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.