SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Ten
SIMON PERCHIK
* * *
This cup grows old while the table
overflows, wobbles then lists
—for a long time now the watermarks
smell from smoke as the dim light
from wood hour after hour
shedding its colors though the chair
pulls you closer, smoothing the way
through daydreams and the mist
that quiets its makeshift sea
empties the Earth with your mouth
kept wet to let in the waves
that once had it all, were walls
for a room now fallen on its back
though your arms ache from lifting
over and over forgetting where.
* * *
Already lifelike a window
is growing from this bathroom sink
though the glass was shaded
—the same flowering bedsheet
you cover the mirror with
still comforts the face
no longer there to see
despite its drip after drip
scented with those stones
mourners leave as evenings
for something you say in the dark
when the time has come
all over again—you lift this cloth
the way these faucets are caressed
by constantly washing your hands
opening them for seas
one on top the other
moving you closer to the bottom.
* * *
Every meal begins with your hands
dry and around your forehead
squeezes into its hiding place
—in such a darkness both shoulders
slump forward till they hear
the tablecloth pulled closer
fed air and a shirt collar
left open, waiting to lie down
where a plate should be—it's the sound
your fingers make when drop by drop
a makeshift lake is pieced together
from a missing vase—wherever you eat
it's night, still wet, bending over
and hand to hand breathe in the smoke
from a chair no longer there
—you eat from a chimney, reach up
with your eyes covered by a bedsheet
still warm from roses and ash.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems appear in Partisan Review, The Nation, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, SurVision, etc. His most recent collection is The Family of Man Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2021.
