*
It was mindless gesture
greeting someone not there
though the cap still tilts
is falling behind as the gust
from passing sirens and bells
helps you close your eyes
where the brim from the inside
folds end over end
catches fire and over your forehead
cushions it with ashes the way a stone
softens another stone, moves it closer
wants it to press your mouth
against the evening and open it
for the darkness you bring
to loosen the earrings and sparks.
*
No, it’s about the sun and a sore
that opens :every morning
is already swollen, weak, clouded over
wobbling from some near-by breeze
reaching down as the hillside
where her shadow should be
though there’s no grass either
only this bed spreading out
the way smoke rises night after night
as the still warm night
that festers in these sheets
can’t wait any longer.
*
You glance the way fishermen aim
then cast their nets and though the camera
will struggle it’s the sea that needs
mending :another chance
at how much longer in the embrace
corners will form for a photograph
already in fear –nothing moves
where what will come and what not
makes you feel for glass, want to be seen.
SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Rosenblum Poems, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. www.simonperchik.com
RYAN RUSIECKI grew up in Westchester County, New York and received his BFA in photography from Bard College in 2020. He currently lives in Kingston, New York where he is pursuing a body of work that investigates the complexities of the recent migration to the Hudson Valley. More of his work featured here.
