“Untitled” by Simon Perchik

Even without a caress its petals

wait, try more red than usual

then sweets, sent along with the scent

from the latest hillside till one grave

blossoms before the others

and you are at last alone

beside a single afternoon, holding on

though your shadow is already airborne

rising out the Earth as moonlight

still warm on your lips, impatient

the way a headstone is no longer carried

once it turns full length to embrace

lift your arms around it, pressing them

against its breasts, its lifeless throat

for whispers, for kisses and bitter air.


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 Reflection in a Glass Eye 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. To view one of his interviews please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

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