Tales of the Zombie War » J Michael

QUARANTINE by J. Michael

admin — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:22:53 +0000

She knows the taste of nails,
a clutch of them in her mouth
like a dressmaker’s pins.
The flavor of iron is comforting,
something she can wield.
Something that will not decay.
She knows the weight
of a hammer, its friendly lever
the extension of her own bones,
its metal face, her fist.
She has plans for this.
She knows every centimeter
of the house, could walk it blindfolded
in the 3 a.m. dark and rearrange
the delicate teacups
on their petal-thin saucers.
Each whining floorboard, each notch
in each door. She knows the number
of cans stacked in silver towers,
each match and bullet.
She hides her life like a secret,
rolls it in her palms.
The burnt crevice that was the stoop,
the boards pounded in layers
as thick as a scab, the bolts and braces.
Her heartbeat is her treasure.
She knows each thud.

STATUES by J. Michael

admin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:30:37 +0000

We first played this game as children
some three thousand miles south of here,
clattering out of screen porches
and down back steps onto cushioning grass.
Here my thick boots snap the snow like bone.
Freeze, somebody would yell, and we’d halt,
our traitorous hearts still pounding their drums.
There is no pulse on the tundra but mine.

Around me, the statues hold their poses,
breathless, dull-eyed, professionally mum;
better players than we could ever manage to be.
I wander among them like a museum visitor
with a sledgehammer. I am a leisurely vandal.
It is winter, the cold stretching solid as steel,
sunless sky exhaling a faint silver light.
It is beautiful. It takes no notice of us.

The statues catch the faint sheen of the stars.
They sprawl and balance, they kneel and crouch.
Freeze. It is my turn to be It. My eyes flick
side to side for the faintest stir. — Nothing.
I gaze at them like a connoisseur, finding
the twisted face of a Rodin, a driftwood skeleton;
here and there the lifelike curves of a Michelangelo.
Profiles I will leave in pieces on an empty gallery’s frozen floor.

GRANDMOTHER SAYS by J. Michael

admin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:46:40 +0000

Grandmother says
they used to bury them.
Whole gardens of them, marked with stones,
pretty trees trimmed into shapes
and little pots for flowers.
She says that there was room
for everyone, and time
for them to go in, one by one.
People would even stand and watch.
Just like at a birthday party,
when the candles are about to go out.
Grandmother says
they didn’t use to have
burn nights, when the grownups
build the bonfire and trucks bring loads
and loads to drop
until the smoke covers up the stars.
They didn’t use to eat skull cookies
or bake bone bread, or dance in the ashes.
Not around here, anyway, she says.
Grandmother shrugs
when I ask if she liked the way
that things used to be better than now.
I wasn’t paying attention, she says.
Things are what they are.
Then she gives me a kiss,
and I sit in her lap
and we watch the fire burn all the way down.

THE VETERAN by J. Michael

admin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:45:37 +0000

Against a barricade of damp sand
in sacks, we’ve been waiting,
ears tuned to the shuffle of soles.
Sweat trails down the stock of my gun.
Firing has gone on for seconds, or hours,
and beneath the edge of cordite and smoke
I can smell the rot of their bodies
as familiar as the smell of my own skin.
JJ turns to me, his face slick with soot
and through it he’s grinning, damn him, grinning,
like he’s the hero of some old war flick,
and I know right then
that this isn’t my story.
I’m not the one who’ll strap himself
to the bomb and fly off into decimation
like some flaming falcon; I’m not the one
who’ll feel his gun melting in his fist,
who’ll go out laughing, blood and sun
flickering on his white teeth.
That’s not me.
Tomorrow,
or the next day,
or the next, they’ll climb through the piles
that began as a barricade, the bodies
tumbled in pieces on either side; our guys
and the others a bit farther gone.
Maybe someone will recognize me.
I look over the sandbags into my own grave.
There’s dirt under my nails. I smell the rot.
Flies jump like beads from a broken chain,
and I know, looking out, that we’re all the same.
We stand on the end of a quivering bridge.
They are the ones who’ve already crossed over.