In the slot for tracks the time between trains
is your last address though it’s the station
that’s waiting for the years gone by to return
the way this unwanted newspaper is already seated
as if it was going further and at the border
would spread as the grammar all travelers learn
from each other to put the minutes in order
before reaching out to hand some conductor
the death certificate that has no period
for the hole to be dug by the silence
reaching out from so many tears
night after night for it to end.
–
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 Family of Man Poems (Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2021). For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website.