First appeared in Not One of Us #47, 4/10/12
The Living Dead
Amanda C. Davis
We survivors bathe our skin in mud
To hide in shattered alleys
From our sharp-eyed conquerors.
We rend our parents’ bodies–
Flesh, fat, meat, marrow–
This gray hair
Will make a pillow
Or a fire.
We keep our women pregnant.
We eat dogs
With collars on.
Weep for us,
Our lucky brothers
Carried off at the start:
We, the damned victors,
You, the lucky failures!
Blessed are the poor in stamina,
For they elude the kingdom of Hell.
We curse the strength
That powers us through desperate evils;
The will that drives our crime,
Squalor,
Sin;
The health that squeezes out
Each stabbing breath.
We dance to puppet-strings entangled
In our own cruel hands.
To be weak,
The happy dead!
But we live on,
We soldiers,
Survivors,
Strong enough to suffer,
Monsters, all.
#
More poems, here: Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Anthology
Check out all my free-to-read work–including podcasts!–here.
Love this story?
Leave a Reply