"[You are reading this ticket out loud, over and over]" by Simon Perchik

You are reading this ticket out loud, over and over
the way a shovel takes from the ground
what it needs to make room and leaves

— word by word you shape both tracks
as the anvil fresh from the flames that say
this trip was sealed by a mouth

still swallowing the coals one by one
to lift the great sea rising in your throat
as the cry headed for words to find

the missing — you cling to a window
that describes your lips tearing in half
the all clear that knows only to look.

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