*
This mannequin is used to miracles, a new jacket
warming where a breath should be—the dead
know all about how a window ices over
where there was none before, kept lit
for the floodlights to break open the glass
—you're still bleeding and the police
will ask for your name though the small stone
was made whole piece by piece by holding you
the way each corner moves closer to another
—there’s a word for this and you are here
to give it life, shop from a grave
that is not a bomb to break open
and for a few minutes there's the long ago
shattered, the breathing faster and faster
as your name, over. over and over while it lasts.
Simon Perchik’s poetry has appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.