It's just poetry, it won't bite

These dead still need pills


10.26.19 Posted in today's words by

Simon Perchik’s most recent poem to appear here was “With no ink and the nib” (August 2019)

These dead still need pills
though the one rock you leave
no longer reaches star to star

—what they swallow is mist :a sea
with its arch dissolved in this black dust
brought back for silence and them

—it could be done, already these graves
are monstrous, all mouth, all lung
and arm in arm begin to flower

overflow the trees, the fruit, the dew
with one more stone to weigh down
the so much coughing

—it’s how they breathe :a tiny flower
with just enough force
undone for thirst and their eyelids.



One Response to “These dead still need pills”

  1. Ed Zahniser says:

    Another great poem for the Simon Perchik canon. Keep swatting them out our way!

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