To the dirt that no longer moves

you offer a mask the way a flower

over and over is readied for mornings

where time begins again as stars

sensing honey and more darkness

—by evening your death

will be used to footsteps one by one

broken off a great loneliness

returning row by row as the small stones

cut out for the mouth and eyes

to sweeten it, ask

where you are going by yourself.

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 Gibson Poems (Cholla Needles, 2019).

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Published in the December 1, 2017 issue: View Contents
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