"[From the same magic spell that's not air]" by Simon Perchik

From the same magic spell that's not air
you lay bare two suns — a blinding run
before there was any life on Earth

— what follows already knows
how love would work and went for it
though nobody will say where that star went

except when reaching out both arms
they somehow were warmed
beginning from the fingertips

locking in the chance they will go cold
point and no one would be there
though every night to get closer

you stand on the same gravestone and weep
while looking down — an ancient ritual
that grows grass black then blacker

to cool what is lying in the ground
has become this invisible hillside
is used to you looking, looking.

Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Reflection in a Glass Eye, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information, including free e-books and his essay, “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

Headshot: Rossetti Perchik

Photo Credit: Staff