Zombie Apocalypse Now: Survival

The air was blurry-wet

when the undead arrived,

a director with his crew,

the red-eyed camera

trained on us,

ready to gobble up

our Vietnam War-fresh brains

for their American art.

We didn’t have lines,

we were “extras.”

We’d survived a war

to be cast into the margins

of our own story.

They say that cameras

steal your souls.

Sometimes, they do.

Sometimes, they pay

minimum wage

which is more

per hour

than I earned

an entire year

working as an apprentice

to a tailor.

Perhaps, three months pregnant

& not showing,

I threw myself

onto the dirt

again & again,

pretending

To the viewer,

I was dead.

I felt dead.

My lover

left me behind

for Paris

with his real wife

& his newborn son

christened Philip

for the Philippines,

the country where

he was born—

in Mandaluyong,

in a refugee camp

just north

of Manila.

The palms grow verdant,

in thick clumps

over the gun-gray river.

In this fertile air,

everything shoots up.

The movie men

planted rigging

into the ground—

so much napalm

faked: it looked

just like

the real thing.