This coffee is still learning, spills
sweetens night after night
the way fireflies flavor their legs
then wait for the rippling hum
that’s not a bat –you teach this cup
smoke, emptiness and what it’s like
to lean across as come right in
let you sip from the black dress
spreading out as mountainside
–with your eyes closed, with honey
you convince this cup to clasp your hand
move it closer to the other
though the darkness already smells
from flypaper, from your elbows
holding on to the wooden table.
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 Rosenblum Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.