Simon Perchik’s most recent poem to appear here was “and though this bottle is empty” (November 2017)

And though it’s dark these dead
still remember how every stone
smells from dirt that never leaves

becomes a sky without an evening
they can hold in one hand
and not the other—they call out

with valleys :cries that have forgotten
to rise far off as sunlight
and trembling—these dead want snow

side by side, already flowers
and lowered, opened at the throat
and no longer breathing.