*
by Simon Perchik
More restless than usual this nail
is eating its prey :the wall
already stunned, waits for the end
—it’s your usual frame, half wood
half by surprise is holding on
as corners that no longer open
though the woman in the picture
is facing the ground that’s carried
the way distances spread out
when there were none before
and swallow her —a make-shift ritual
where she is passed wall to wall
around the room as a season
that waits among the dead leaves
takes your hand just to hold it.
_____________________________________________________
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,
published by box of chalk in 2017. For more information,
please visit his website.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2018 Next page ►
More restless than usual this nail
is eating its prey :the wall
already stunned, waits for the end
—it’s your usual frame, half wood
half by surprise is holding on
as corners that no longer open
though the woman in the picture
is facing the ground that’s carried
the way distances spread out
when there were none before
and swallow her —a make-shift ritual
where she is passed wall to wall
around the room as a season
that waits among the dead leaves
takes your hand just to hold it.
_____________________________________________________
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,
published by box of chalk in 2017. For more information,
please visit his website.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2018 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 13, Number 1
(Spring 2018)
Copyright © 2018
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 13, Number 1
(Spring 2018)
Copyright © 2018
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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