I was born
and then I died.
I was born and then
I died fighting. I was
born and then I died fighting zombies while the sand
ran out of the holes in my hands back down to the bottom
of the ocean. I was born and then I died fighting zombies like my mother
and her mother before her and her mother’s
mother. Women have it so bad, we’ve got
holes in our hands and in our hearts where the babies
have pierced them
Ouch. I was born and then I died watching TV. I came back
I was born and then I died watching zombies die on TV. I held my
remote like a saber and hoped pushing buttons would make me the
man whose smooth hands are dappled with dust-speckled light from
the redolent land of Arcadia. The smooth-handed man takes up his bow,
knocks the arrow
The arrow goes thwack
when it pierces
the eye. That’s how they die
I was born and then I died leaning close to you, singing, pouring words in a river down your small pink ear through the channels to your brain made of subatomic particles like neutrons, perhaps, though I’m not sure, because
I died. Everything in sight smacks of hedonistic lassitude. A box of soft tissues filled with lotion and a bottle of Chablis. The babe, the sweet babe, on a blanket, unarmed. He was born and then
eventually
I’ll die
Three unnamed criminals, first. Then
a zombified child. Two former people
named Leon and Hannah. A family horse.
Wayne (bitten), Ed (eaten), and thirteen
anonymous lives. Amy, sweet Amy, shot once
in the head. “Out of mercy,” it says. Jim
died of infection. Two Drs. Jenner, and Jacqui,
who chose to explode. The way the wind
billows a motorbike cover. Stepping over a
tea bag squashed on the street. My husband
says, fondly, What’s left of your brain is decaying
at breakneck speed. The woman in front
of me’s long blonde hair. Almost white. The yellow-
billed loon sounds like someone is laughing—
At me? At me?
I want it all: wall clocks
T-shirts
dog tags mugs dolls
The fleece throw
with Michonne
The poster of you
when your hair was too short
with your
crossbow
The bracelet hitching
my heart
to your name
I’m not thinking
of how I’m bewitched
and belittled
by corporate
dominion
or how I’ve been
yoked
to a man-shaped
ghost
I’m just thinking
At last
the fourth wall
has dissolved
and
My love is
incarnate
forever
Inside the dream inside
the car it’s dusk your back’s
against the window which
the dead. Our talk grows
leaves and stems and
passionless as dust. The light is low
the dead are rumbling like
the thunder in a show your hair
is slicked with great precision
by your ears. You are
my own and someone
forty million else’s
how your thigh
lies close to mine and psychically
we meld but we
eternally untouching
look ahead, into the windshield
where the view is of the future
rotting-jawed and so un-
fruitfully unslakable the dead
You broke
down the bodies
saying feed me
belabor my soul
in the scraped
bowl of summits
the kings all around
crossing snow
we wore sinews
and hides all the
hellish long haul
Survival
takes time. It takes
place in the mind
Who’ll cleanse
& align the charred
morsels of story
we sell
the hacked limbs
the fouled mouth
the hard heart or
the litter of coins
dropped out like a
birth in the stream
running loud down
god’s mountain’s
improvident thigh
When the train
comes at last
bearing humans
the woman still
eating her husband’s face
looks up
flesh burning
the dry white sheet of the past: I can almost
see the new
season from here