VICIOUS VERSES AND REANIMATED RHYMES: ZANY ZOMBIE POETRY FOR THE UNDEAD HEAD
Edited
by
A.P. Fuchs
Published by Coscom Entertainment at Smashwords.com
This book is also available as a paperback at your favorite online retailer like Amazon.com, or through your local bookstore.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons living or dead or living dead is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-897217-96-2
All poems contained herein are Copyright © 2009 by their respective authors. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce in whole or in part in any form or medium.
Published by Coscom Entertainment
www.coscomentertainment.com
eBook Edition
Printed and bound in the USA
Cover art by Sean Simmans
Edited by A.P. Fuchs
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Viscera
Isabella by Adam Huber
I, Zambi by Kyle Hemmings
Forever by Charles A. Gramlich
Narcissus, Deceased by Steve Rasnic Tem
Undead Valentine by J.H. Hobson
Love in the Time of Zombification by C.J. Lines
The Zombie Blues by Paul A. Freeman
Forest Lament by Michael Josef
The Zombie Flu by Janet L. Hetherington
Sudden Death by Lester Smith
The Virus by Sheri Gambino
Dead Land by Keith Gouveia
Don’t Zombie Me by Chris Bartholomew
You Are Horror and Light by John Philip Johnson
Zombie Zombie by Robert M. Hildebrand Jr.
Twenty Questions by Gregory L. Norris
Zombie Love by Paul A. Freeman
Discourse of a Zombie by Mercedes M. Yardley
Me Returneth by W. Bill Czolgosz
My Zombie Journal by Matt Betts
County Morgue by Greg Schwartz
Natural Succession by Chris Lynch
Reanimation by Casey Quinn
5 Dark Ravens by Joseph Grant
A Re-birth by Robert Essig
Amore, Zombie Style by Lin Neiswender
Misfire by Mark Webb
Dead Poetry Jam by J. Bradley
One Plus One Equals Yum by J.H. Hobson
Zombie Bride by Jonathan Pinnock
Romero Bouquet by Zed Zefram
Last Year by Michael Kriesel
Her Box-song, Unending by Alex Dally MacFarlane
On the Outskirts of the Last City of the Living by Kevin James Miller
Zombie Slave by John R. Platt
Grandpa by Michael Cieslak
Death Shall Not Part by Ronnie K. Stephens
The Call of the Corpse by Gayle Arrowood
We Suffer! by Robert Essig
Zombie at My Door by John Hayes
Necromancin’ by Kevin Lucia
A Day in the Death of a Zombie by Carla Girtman
The Maintenance of Certain Standards by Rachel Green
State of Emergency by Eric Ian Steele
Decay by Carl Hose
Say Cheese by Albert Melear
Echoes of Identity by John R. Platt
What They Want to Tell Us, But Can’t by C. Hildebrand
Zombie Lovers by Sheri Gambino
Teeth by Casey Quinn
Evolution of the Dead by Sheldon S. Higdon
Show and Tell by James S. Dorr
The Burning Zombie Question by Shaula Evans
Former Vocations by Aaron Polson
Institutions of Higher Learning by Zombie Zak
Bed and Breakfast by Joe Nazare
Feast by J. Bradley
Crème Brûlée by Katherine Sanger
Caroline by Eric Ian Steele
Canned Beans by Greg Schwartz
Incarnate by Jennifer Williams
Sapid by Adam J. Whitlatch
Slow Bites by Steve Vernon
It’s Never Too Late by Roxanne Fuchs
Preparing for the Eventuality by Stephen D. Rogers
Them by Eric Ian Steele
The End is Come by Zombie Zak
A Zombie Sestina: Only Flesh by Tonia Brown
Invidia by Jennifer Williams
Such a Little Thing by Camille Alexa
Corpse by Michael Cieslak
They Eat Our Brains by J.C. Hay
Oh, Scheherazade by J.P. Wickwire
Surviving the Horde by Peggy Christie
The Living, the Dead, and the Entropic by Eric Hermanson
The World Has Gone to Hell by Zombie Zak
Esurient by Adam J. Whitlatch
Cold, Dead Meat by C.A. Young
Zombie Love Sonnet by Anthony Watson
When the Dead Were Among Us by Kara Ferguson
Git Along, You Zombies by Lester Smith
Trapped by Sheri Gambino
Kismet by Adam J. Whitlatch
Rage, Rage in the Dying of Twilight by Rich Ristow
The Hunger by Susan Satterfield
The Whites of Their Eyes by Andrew J. Wilson
Zombie Weather by Michael Kriesel
Born to Death by Mark M. Johnson
The Day of Re-birth by Sheri Gambino
Morte D’Amour by Jennifer Williams
Head Out by Nathalie Boisard-Beudin
Zombie Semi-Sonnet by J.H. Hobson
Fred by Berrien C. Henderson
Devolvement by Ginger Nielsen
Deadly Relationships by Patsy Collins
Zombie Attack Escape Plan by Claire Askew
Payback Time by Paul A. Freeman
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VICIOUS VERSES AND REANIMATED RHYMES: ZANY ZOMBIE POETRY FOR THE UNDEAD HEAD
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Isabella
by
Adam Huber
The bile
Drip
Drip
Drips from her distended jaw.
She hovers above me
And I cry
This was never supposed to be.
My throat clenches
And hers
It flexes.
Before it all started she was someone else.
We all were:
Me—a father
Her—my daughter.
The roles have changed:
Her—the hunter
Me—the prey.
Her eyes are glossed over,
Empty,
Instinct at its most primal.
And she
My Isabella,
Is surging with raw hunger.
The officials, they tried to explain,
They gave reasons,
But there’s nothing
That can truly explain the horror
When your daughter is a beast.
There are no reasons.
The smell of rot is strong.
Isabella is salivating in streams.
She lunges and bites.
My tears aren’t from the pain;
Spill and mix
Blood and saline.
It’s all come to a head.
Nothing more than an object
Of blind rage;
It was her mother who killed her.
Since the virus,
Family has meant everything
And nothing,
Depending on your side of death.
I am nothing,
Not to her,
Not any more.
Her teeth are dull,
But she’s quick and strong now.
Whatever she’s become makes her mouth hot on my flesh,
A fever like she had during a bout with chicken pox.
I should fight,
But I don’t,
Can’t.
She’s my Isabella
And she hasn’t won.
So much as I’ve lost,
So much as we’ve all lost.
The spread was rapid
But we were careful.
Isolated.
It was a stray dog that did us in:
My wife,
My daughter,
Now me.
As my throat tears
And her blunt teeth crush my windpipe,
I’m thinking of the swing set in the backyard.
We built it together,
The weekend before her sixth birthday,
Three years ago now.
And I’m wondering if she remembers,
But her eyes remain blank,
My blood staining her mouth and chin.
There’s the smile
That got me through so much,
Now tarnished and tweaked and twisted.
I’m slipping
And my greatest fear
Even above the pain
Is a gnawing thought:
When I come back
Will I remember?
Will she still be my Isabella?
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I, Zambi
by
Kyle Hemmings
At our stately mansion over Twin Moon Hill
Paid with my wife’s generous dowry,
I labored in the cellar lab
From morning to night.
It smelled of moss and sulfuric fumes.
I was trying to invent a recipe
To cure the world of its ills,
Its diseases and bad tempers,
But I pushed this agenda aside.
My wife was growing cold,
No longer so easily offered herself to me
In the old sense.
I suspected affairs and midnight debaucheries.
I sensed the ghosts of other men in our bedroom.
It was only weeks before that I had my brother,
Such an impressionable and fragile bachelor,
Committed for insanity.
At night he would howl like a wolf.
The doctors claimed that love drove him mad.
But what love was this?
For the moment, my wife was my only priority.
In the lab, filled with specimens from all over the world,
I searched for a solvent.
I searched for a solution.
With rubber gloves I collected the secretions
Of a bouga toad, then added the detrotoxin
From a puffer fish.
I mixed tarantulas and millipedes,
The seeds of poisonous plants,
The skins from tree frogs
And ground-up bones.
The recipe for making a zombie.
In the parlor, I sidled up to my love,
Who was reading a book on the virtue of chasteness.
I rubbed the brew on her skin and kissed her soft cheek.
Soon, her skin appeared blanched and her eyes froze.
She keeled over—very much a dead woman.
But not for long.
I then applied the potion known as “zombie’s cucumber.”
Within minutes, as my fingers shook,
She opened her eyes and slowly rose from the floor.
But she could not speak nor remember who she was.
I had robbed her of both personality and soul.
I led her into the bedroom and commanded her to undress.
In bed, planting frugal kisses on her face and neck,
I knew it was her who had driven my brother mad.
And outside, the wind cried, I, Zambi.
Or was it a wolf?
Or perhaps I was just hearing things.
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Forever
by
Charles A. Gramlich
At the dawn these soldiers rise
From the fields where bitterness lies.
Blue and gray, wide eyed with fear
They gird their loins for battle here
To fight, to kill, for all they hold dear.
And so with weapons grim to hand,
With throats carved sharp with cries,
They strike the music, the martial band,
The cannons sing, the grapeshot flies.
They loose the fateful battle hound,
They charge upon the red, red ground
And death it comes, they fall like sheaves
Of wheat and corn, or like winter leaves.
The ragged lines, they bow and bend,
The smoke across the land does wend
And the broken only God can mend.
But across the way they come on bold,
Like the mythic heroes of old.
They will not turn, they will not break,
Beneath the sun whose rays do rake,
They will not, their flag forsake.
And from the pall their enemies loom,
The bullets whisper, sweep like a broom.
The charge it carries to the lines
Through the carnage, through the mines.
Hand to hand with foes they grapple
And with gore the fields do dapple.
Whisper/screams of doubt and pain
Roil and echo across the plain.
The men they fall to move no more
For the queen of war, that faithless whore.
Then night descends to cloak the dead
Where these soldiers now are bled.
Silence paints the scarlet ways
Till sun and soldiers both arise
Forever through the weary days
Gettysburg, they do reprise.
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Narcissus, Deceased
by
Steve Rasnic Tem
In the dirtied mirror
That’s your face, your lips,
Your eyes like cameras
For the real you thousands
Of miles or years away.
You raise your old hand
On thirty-second delay, try
To caress yourself, but only