The Ofi Press Magazine

Poem by Simon Perchik (USA)

Published in issue 31 (August 2013).

Image: Woman Sitting with a Child in Her Arms (1890)

By Mary Cassatt

Don't shake hands! bring flowers

the way all dirt has a place to go

though your arms stay behind, sifting

for a suit, a shirt :the granite

you grow piece by piece from a fragrance

spread out, feeding on open mountainside

and building-fronts :each stone picked

for its thin shadow ready to spring

swallow the smallest thing you have

-you're still not used to being here

surrounded by small shops, street lamps

a garment district where nothing fits

where one arm is hanging down, dissolving

into pathways and hollow roots trembling

under its silence -you can't lift a thing.