You wipe as if the moon
once warmed the Earth
still excites your nose
dripping with shapelessness
and the fever left over
from some fiery beginning
half shoreline, half
waves still flaring up
staking out their claim
to memory -- inside your nose
a brain, left behind
to deal with the scent
smoldering leaves give off
-- you stiff for stars
that have no light yet
only the fragrance stones replace
endlessly covering the dead
with leaves and these and these dried flowers
everywhere burning in small piles
--what you smell is a smoke
that can only remember.
Simon Perchik has many, many periodical publishing credits including Partisan Review, Poetry, The Nation, North American Review, Beloit, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Osiris, The Small Pond Magazine, 13thWR, and The New Yorker, among others. He has had numerous books of his poetry published including his Collected works issued by Pavement Saw Press. He lives in South Hampton, NY.