Simon Perchik’s most recent poem to appear here was “these dead still need pills” (October 2019). 

These piles hold back :each finger
embraced the way darkness
covers a sky no longer needed

and what you breathe out
stays black till it cools
closes and overhead the dirt

shades you though clouds
left in the open are useless now
pulled along behind these bars

used to hands growing huge
in sunlight, in this makeshift prison
filling with mist and shovels.