"Words Between Earth and Water" by Simon Perchik (2003)

Poems from Iowa Review, Northwest Review, Shearsman, etc

It's all in triplets, salimi-sliced, working with a restricted palette of words. Here are the page.line locations of some phrases -

• the way - 1.3, 2.2, 3.4, 4.4, 6.2, 7.2, 8.4, 10.6, 11.2, 12.2, 13.5, 14.10, 15.1, 16.3, 17.8, 18.13, 20.4, 21.4, 22.8
• as if - 1.1, 3.17, 4.1, 6.10, 7.1, 8.8, 10.2, 16.15, 17.11, 21.2, 23.12
• though - 3.3, 4.11, 5.3, 6.6, 7.7, 8.14, 10.13, 11.4, 12.1, 12.17, 13.9, 14.1, 14.4, 15.4, 17.14, 21.8, 22.1, 23.4, 24.8

I could almost believe that the lines were randomly dealt out between the poems. Here are some samples -

• though what rises from the ground is lifeless, sets out on the weaker side as shadow, a shell kept empty for calm for leaf by blinding leaf and this smoke half there, half anchored against the rake left to rust, no longer struggling (p.7)

• Each with a fence the darkness never heals, comes and goes the way each star circles this gate reclaims the Earth with a chain half one by one, half where all the dead clasp hands (p.16)

• it's your usual match, half wood half some mountainside breathing again and rock by rock rescued by the simple flame that looms over you as smoke broken open for rain and falling back (p.19)