On First Looking into George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead


My old 15” b&w Zenith
turned-on with pliers shakes
midnight the kitchen light left on
another in a like movie says

When there’s no more room in hell
the dead will walk the earth
I’m so scared Barbara says
she is taken and devoured

and after a documentary
on the war in Vietnam
wounded soldiers slung over shoulders
comrades run toward helicopters

mushrooms of napalm
click-clack of machine guns
elephant grass bent from tracer fire
and gunship rotors when the last

hold-out from that horrible night
is shot in the forehead
and placed with others in a pyre
that flares by the clack-click of someone’s Zippo