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I Still Bite the Burnt Cork
I still bite the burnt cork
and under the waxed lipstick
--with my teeth still peel
from this candy bar
its baggy wig, its Harrison Street
Godwin street --I know their names
why can't they remember mine.
They mistake me for the kid
whose breath left watermarks
whose floppy shoe was never found
though month under month
as every new calendar is searched.
I begin each year unwrapping.
October waiting inside
even in the rain --nine pages
crumpled :Spring and Summer, what's left
from Winter and the Fall --October
still sweetened, bathed
in almonds and crinkling paper :the mask
hugged till I become that oversized moon
swollen from fruit and house to house
that kid behind each door
as every month after
will be worth holding, will pass
from stranger to stranger
ringing and remembered.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Queen's Quarterly and elsewhere.
Readers interested in learning more are invited to read his essay "Magic, Illusion
and Other Realities" at www.geocities.com/simonthepoet which has a complete bibliography.
Email: Simon Perchik
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