Zombie Inside!
Feb. 14th, 2008 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaAs several people on my flist have noted, today is the last day to submit an entry to the Insert a Zombie contest at Inside a Dog (http://www.insideadog.com.au/residence/index.php/maureen-johnson/insert-a-zombie-win-a-prize/)
Here are my two submissions. For some reason I can't make the cut tag work. Apologies for length.
Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness":
. . .The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to flicker along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone feebly, and then vanished. Something had swallowed it. Lights of ships winked out in the fairway--a great stir of shadows went up and went down. Faintly, gurgling shrieks passed over the water. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
‘And this also,’ said Marlowe suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth. On the whole, I’d rather be in Africa.'
‘Ya think?’ the zombie smirked as it climbed over the gunwale.
* * *
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Zombie
Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the twitching corpse.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a zombie
That has eaten three brains.
III
The stained rag whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a zombie
Are in trouble.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of rotting meat
Or the beauty of desiccated flesh,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the Creature
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An inevitable doom.
VII
O thin men of Haiti,
Why do you imagine drooling jaws?
Do you not see how Baron Samedi
Nibbles on the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I love vile carnage
And stinking, unimaginable gore;
But I know, too,
That the Zombie is involved
In what I do.
IX
When the Undead limped out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of my worst nightmares.
X
At the sight of corpses
Staggering in a green light,
Even the mouthless victims
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a growing angst.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For monsters.
XII
The river is moving.
The Undead must be lurking.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
We were bleeding
And we were going to bleed.
The revenant munched
On the scattered limbs.
Here are my two submissions. For some reason I can't make the cut tag work. Apologies for length.
Joseph Conrad, "Heart of Darkness":
. . .The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to flicker along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone feebly, and then vanished. Something had swallowed it. Lights of ships winked out in the fairway--a great stir of shadows went up and went down. Faintly, gurgling shrieks passed over the water. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
‘And this also,’ said Marlowe suddenly, ‘has been one of the dark places of the earth. On the whole, I’d rather be in Africa.'
‘Ya think?’ the zombie smirked as it climbed over the gunwale.
* * *
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Zombie
Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the twitching corpse.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a zombie
That has eaten three brains.
III
The stained rag whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a zombie
Are in trouble.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of rotting meat
Or the beauty of desiccated flesh,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the Creature
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An inevitable doom.
VII
O thin men of Haiti,
Why do you imagine drooling jaws?
Do you not see how Baron Samedi
Nibbles on the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I love vile carnage
And stinking, unimaginable gore;
But I know, too,
That the Zombie is involved
In what I do.
IX
When the Undead limped out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of my worst nightmares.
X
At the sight of corpses
Staggering in a green light,
Even the mouthless victims
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a growing angst.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For monsters.
XII
The river is moving.
The Undead must be lurking.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
We were bleeding
And we were going to bleed.
The revenant munched
On the scattered limbs.
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 04:34 am (UTC)Are in trouble.
As the man says, "Genius is just fine observation . . . " :)
I am late to the party, as always. But Wallace Stevens and zombies – yes! Yes, indeed. Like prosciutto and melon.
I am resisting the temptation to vandalize "Sunday Morning" in response. Instead, perhaps:
There are no bears among the brambles
Only a zombie there, who shambles
With matted hair,
Behind a lady with a light
Who walks in the arcade at night
In pious prayer.
A pity her perambulation
Should fill the belly of a Haitian
With mind so rare!
I’m curious about the way zombies are cropping up lately, though I suppose it is in the nature of zombies to be unaccountably and surprisingly there when you have not been thinking to look for them. George Romero's birthday is February 4 and I thought, OK, Zombie Day! But perhaps zombies are big enough, hot enough, now enough that they deserve more than a day; maybe they deserve to have all of February as Zombie Month. I could get behind that. The month of overextended winter, of dissatisfied craving for warmth, of not-quite-spring-training (pitchers and catchers only), seems a good month to host the impatient, returning undead.
Hello, by the way. It’s been too long!
no subject
Date: 2008-02-18 06:21 am (UTC)Are zombies cropping up lately? I mean besides on the flists of folks like us who hang around with a bunch of YA fantasy authors? With those guys, every day is Zombie Day.
Of course, there's the one in the White House, but would you say it's been cropping up lately? Seems to me it's been staying out of sight in its mouldering cave, gnawing old bones.
Hello back atcha! *waves*
OTOH,
no subject
Date: 2008-02-20 07:44 pm (UTC)You know, it may just be me. I seem to be stumbling across the undead, so to speak, in all sorts of random reading, internet links, random conversational references, movies rented not-specifically-for-zombie-content, etc. I was looking up something about Icelandic sagas, as one does, and twenty pages into Grettir the Strong, our man climbs into a tomb and fights a zombie. So it may be some weird synchronicity or coincidence. Or maybe they are just after me and, in best horror movie tradition, no one else can see until it is too late! If you notice a falling-off in my grammar and syntax, avoid travel to DC.
Speaking of DC, and the revenant in the White House, he seems diminished at the moment but we know his kind turn out to be awfully resilient, even after losing limbs and major organ systems. So it's probably best to remain constantly vigilant for another eleven months or so. The good news is that, in designating a successor, he seems to have feasted in traditional fashion on poor Senator McCain, who never had much upstairs to begin with. 1000 more years! That's their platform? This campaign could actually be fun.
I'm enjoying Maureen Johnson's blog -- congrats on your appearance among the Zombay des Refuses!