print previewback CATHY LINH CHE
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 be shot
in the back.
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. 