*

Simon Perchik  

 

 

    The Public Works Department van

    as spiders will refill

    a damaged strand, its frost

 

    too heavy— this street

    snapped!  kids by the armfuls

    falling through, the school

    ringing toward laughter and escape

 

    and faith once abstract

    now warms and wraps.

    Our Main Street snared, the sun

    all evening will eat the light

    that quit struggling, barely breathes

 

    sprawled against my arms

    — again my arms

    with nothing to embrace

    listening for a nourishment

    a rake and shovel and repair.

          

    

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Tipton Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Rafts (Parsifal Editions, 2007) is his most recent collection. Family of Man (Pavement Saw Press) is scheduled for Fall 2009. For more information, including his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet.

 

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