Carrie Cook
We searched for misunderstanding
in Midwestern diners. We ate stories—
double-fisted—off cobs, like locusts: we sang
the Dow industrial and clotted the sky.
Our blood trapped in that single moment,
measured in teeth. We grow them in rows
now. Fiction has failed, but you knew that.
So many buzz words screeching
to a needy halt. The zombies are us.
They have always been us, scrambling
inadequate from the graves of ledes,
calling to the void and offering small,
sarcastic claps, hiding from the sun
in the shadows under your eyes.
***
Carrie Cook received her MA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and is currently living in Colorado. Her work has appeared or is upcoming in The Columbia Review, Midwestern Gothic, Menacing Hedge, and Touchstone.