You lead your squad of zombies
from the graveyard to the village
and seat them in the café
where they hog every table.
The stink curdles living souls
and renders the police impotent.
You want these creatures for yard work,
cleaning up winter storm debris
and helping with the gardening.
Some look strong and healthy enough
but others have decayed and lost limbs,
rendering them useless. You order
a mess of brains to fuel them to work
but the café doesn’t offer
human offal, only baked goods
and ham, egg salad, and BLTs.
They’ll have to settle for liver
fried with Vidalia onions.
Yes, I’ll help you supervise them
in dragging branches to the chipper
and weeding your vegetable patch
and filling the compost bin with leaves.
You learned to make zombies in Russia
where the supply of brain fodder
is adequate for a whole army.
I don’t approve of this abuse
of the living dead. But rather
than let them roam the village,
setting every dog barking,
I’ll help keep order until
you return these creatures to worlds
of entropy, dark places
that tunnel through every sleep.