Lacking
the Wind's Higher Reasoning
By Canisia Lubrin
Propose this: If zombies slay each other on
TV, redraw the atlases,
deadbolt doors, faraway beds, small systems
happened in the body
mid-chance, reveal how thirst can carry the
other in remise
toward remedy & bones as cutlery or the
way the inner habituates the outer.
Faraway: atlases doors and beds include our
savage nature, though
closer to the mind’s undertow, we’ve walked
dead, feet-first from higher reasoning,
and’ve found prison streets habitat for the
good
we’ve tunnelled through to get here. With
all of our grand books still here
we’ve settled for walking dead, really, to
lockdown the womb by calling it rib
—and that’s not extinction, mind you, only
music, that diurnal rage
humming the mouth. Sawdust spine,
scotch-taped heart
in the signposts pointing the way to retake
the composite scrolls home.
What persuades the zombie more than death
hardly pauses a theory-in-slow-motion,
so don’t try. Or try the placation of
shopping malls laundry rooms bakeries,
hospice
forms for the acuity of shackles. But you’re
gonna need a bullet, a door, the atlas’s
proof of the soul in its night-time. Then
proceed: make beds hard, keep backs frozen.
Try again once you’ve perused: shopping,
laundry, bakeries, hospice.
Then, first: mend towards the sake of bones,
their blueprint for cutlery.
And with bed-backs frozen, lift that
shrivelled soul glutting the road, instead
proposing: zombies abstract that to slay is
to scavenge the long-departed hand of god.
