Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013).

It’s a short step from winter and the bed
yet you can’t hear its sheet narrow, become
the stream pouring from each stone fountain

and graveyard, can’t touch her breasts
now that every handful turns to powder
smoothed over the way a motionless cloud

is tracked drop by drop –you count
backwards though every room in this place
is taking on water –what you hear

is the last drop falling through her arm
as a single word –Mickie! louder, louder
and you hold hands, go on drowning.

[image: Heather Landis – Abyss of the Disheartened]