simon perchik

 

 

It's not the needle, leaving
is always faint, a metallic hum :my blood
and along this clear glass tube
while you stare from some cockpit canopy
banking slowly into ice, then rain, then ice
never coming to an end

--not the sudden breeze
unfolding under my skin
though you grip my wrist, count the years
till I say that in the dark
my breathing slows --more light! and you

press a small warm bulb into my eyes
tell me inhale, deep, go down
--come back, you say, kisses
will bathe me, --my blood show where
--a plane can't just disappear

 

its enormous wing embedded in my heart
and fill this tube, piece by piece
falling without me.

 

 

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



 

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