poem
Volume 26, Number 1

*

You can’t hold back this knob
already resistant to sunlight
filling your lungs

the way all the firewood on Earth
waits in these clouds
as cries and ruin

and though the sky is aging
you hurry through, each breath
weak in the doorway

covers it with a lid
half lit, half spreading out
to open, close and you

are breathing for two, the air
given some mist
to find its way home.


—Simon Perchik