The Day the Zombie Died

by Arun Jeetoo

after George A. Romero

​

It is 1600           in london            a monday

one day after bastille day           or my birthday           yes

it is 2017 and i read buzzfeed news on my phone

the battery is 39 per cent           i will get off the 1652 to stevenage

at 1800           and then go straight to sleep

i wont know the uber driver who picks me up

i walk down the fresh purple street           sunsetting

have an onion bhaji sandwich and an evian and check

my facebook newsfeed                to see what my enemies

across the world are doing these days

                                      i get to sainsburys and pavlo              (first name i dont know i

dont think so

maybe)           doesnt even check he      has given me more change than its

due and in

waterstones           i get a lorde

for ruban with drawings of mike perry             although i do

think of brockhampton           solange or

one of kureshis plays           but i dont i stick with lorde

and roll into           hmv

ask for some fukunaga

i

                                 enter a sweetshop

for a ten pack of menthols

carton of neilson           He           is up in the corner on the tv

the reporter sobs

i am sweating a lot by now and

refresh                facebook newsfeed

in tears at status after status                    with sad face emojis heart emojis like

emojis about him                    and then

my phone

'The Day the Zombie Died' is a real-life account of my wanderings around retail shops and places in London (UK) and my discovery that the godfather of zombies has died. The mundane serves as a backdrop to highlight this life-altering moment of George A. Romero's death-- an artist who I profoundly admired and made the world I live in that little bit more bearable. Omitting punctuation, capitalisation, playing with the blank document space, stanza lines and pace was necessary to parallel my movements across London. For this poem in particular, I want to deliver a gut punch reaction that leaves the reader pining forever..

 

Arun Jeetoo is poet and educator from London. His words appear in The London Reader, a gallery in Cardiff with LUMIN Journal, CivicLecister’s Black Lives Matter Anthology, The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, Acid Bath Publishing and many more online and print anthologies and magazines. His debut pamphlet I Want to Be the One You Think About at Night was published under Waterloo Press (2020).

Arun can be found on Twitter @g2poetry, on Instagram @g2poetry or on Facebook @G2poetry