Of those who lay awake, the feet lit up
with visions, sweat-cold, crawling in the sheets,
with dreams of broken glass, electrodes, all
the tortures that begin with the feet, boots
of boiling lead, the cement overshoes—
poor feet. Flat and clammy as the flounder
that drags its thin skinned belly over rocks
the feet condemned to walk upon the earth
to bear the borrowed body through its debt.
The body like an empty farmhouse where
survivors have found refuge from the zombies,
above the bitten child who haunts the cellar
where the cowards go to board themselves in
and wait, although they know there's no way out.
© 2007 Katherine Maurer
received her MFA from the University of Illinois in 2005. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Sycamore Review. She has worked as a teacher, music promoter, community organizer, and assistant editor at both Ninth Letter and the Dallas Poets' Community Press. She lives in Urbana, Illinois.
