ISSUE TWO: "[You inhale the way this sand]" by Simon Perchik

[You inhale the way this sand]

You inhale the way this sand
is filled with saliva half salt
half doubling back, forgets the waves

no longer have a season — is forever
harvesting the rain, the gusts or boats
criss-crossing the same shoreline

while your belly drains and the Earth
swallowed whole by driftwood and longing
— you return to sand, lie down

with these small stones and pollen
ripening as if a root so enormous
would never again be thirsty

would caress your cheeks with grass
that has no other home, is thinning out
its great rivers and later on.

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 Osiris Poems (box of chalk, 2017). For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled, “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Headshot: Rossetti Perchik

Photo Credit: Staff