Simon Perchik

[You lift a small stone on top]

You lift a small stone on top
till the smoke turns black
become a chimney-sweep

scraping the dust with flowers
cut in half, were still alive
helping you remember

though once your hand is empty
it opens the way these dead
were gathered from dirt

each year higher, are listening
for rising air and mourners
used to so many steps :her grave

knows how lovingly the ashes fell
cling to the ground as nights
side by side still counting the grass

by twos though you come here
for work, ask for work
with rags and dried-up brushes.

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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 Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay, “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.