"[Her chest no longer listening]" by Simon Perchik

Her chest no longer listening
though both your arms stay folded
one over the other, wet

the way these dead dare each night
to arrive without them — you stand in front
shirtless, refuse to shake hands

or take from her grave the rocks you left
as a threat to the others not to take what’s hers
not the dirt between the afternoons

not your fingertips, not this rain
growing more and more beautiful
over her breasts, homesick as a flower.

Simon Perchik

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 Osiris Poems (boxofchalk, 2017). For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

Headshot: Rossetti Perchik

Photo Credit: Staff