MK Chavez is an Afro-Latinx writer and educator. She is the author of Mothermorphosis, and Dear Animal (Nomadic Press), and the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie. Chavez curates the reading series Lyrics & Dirges and is co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She is a recipient of the Alameda County Arts Leadership Award, the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the 2021 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press literary award. Her most recent publications can be found in the Academy of Poets Poem-A-Day series and at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with the Voice of Trees projects. She teaches writing and is a literary coach through Ouroboros Writing Lab.
I Was A Mixed Race Zombie
I wasn’t born a relentless creature of resurrection.
If I could, I would eat from the top of my head.
I would feed the seventh chakra, that mysterious Lotus. A thousand petals
and twenty layers of fifty more petals.
Once I was so invisible that I ate my way into existence.
I consumed the bigot cashier from Joann Fabrics, the man at Whole Foods
who wanted to cut me in line, I ate the wolf whistler and his wife.
Then I said—
I am pure consciousness because my Lotus ate your Lotus.
My Lotus eats fear. My Lotus lingers at the gateway of history.
Loving vs. Virginia.
Liminal skin, one drop, or more.
My brother named me dark magic. My uncle sang Brown sugar at me.
Children of the emerging paradigm—who will pick you for their team.
My Lotus has eaten every inquiry into mixed race.
My lotus mestajize.
My Lotus in Spanglish.
My Lotus in Salvi-Noir.
My Lotus in afro-hyphenate.
My Lotus eating the binary and then belching.
Lotus of mystery ethnic and not enough boxes. Lotus of the multiracial multiverse.
The most terrifying part of the movie is never what you think.
What if zombies are just misunderstood?
Birth of American Horrors
Horror is protean in its creation
of subgenres. Like psychoplasmics
in The Brood. Like rape-revenge, like American
anxieties and guilt, eco-horror
desecration of land
and body horror. Shark
whale, woman-girl, Jenny Hanivers.
Ghost-themed comeuppances. Cabrini
greens, gentrification. Fear the other
fear the brothers, the sisters
the kindred, everyone in history
ever wronged rising from graves,
the call is coming from inside the house.
Even the trees are coming to get you
nuclear creature features, night of the lepus.
Home invasions, body snatchers.
Science monsters, experimentation gone wrong
right, the slow creep and the desperation
of the zombie as they turn
ravenous. Starvation & violence run fast
28 days turn into more.
Cordyceps control
in the new tundra. Everything
melts. Bringing humans
together in uncomfortable ways
swampy folk horror, fears dangle like meat,
baby has a cleaver
and religious fervor guided leaders.
How many times
do the lessons have to be learned?
Enter Arthouse— The homicidal deer.
The aliens were inside.
We had the cure, we just didn’t
want to share it, so much so
that we bend backward and run down
the stairs on fingertips and toes just to make it
normal and on the news
mumblecore is always in season.