Witness The Black Zombi Apocalypse
Image courtesy of Boulevard magazine.
Poem: “Black Zombi”
Bryan Byrdlong’s poem, “Black Zombi” was the winner of Boulevard’s 2020 poetry contest for emerging writers and it presents a horrifying perspective as it speaks to its plural subjects, a mass of yous, who are told who and what they are by how they’re perceived to be in the world. It’s these perceptions by an outside viewer, a white gaze, that creates an instructional tone that informs the poem’s yous about themselves. Because of these judgments, the yous, are marginalized not only in content but in form within the poem, with the you of the poem standing out in each stanza from a hanging indent that further illustrates the isolation of the Black bodies being seen and judged.
You are everywhere the dark touches
N-----brown, pupil of the eye, winking sclera.
You open envelopes of reality as you walk
brilliant moth blade through suburbia.— ”Black Zombi”
Bryan Byrdlong
Boulevard, Vol. 36, Nos 2 & 3
The you is perceived as creepy and disturbing, judged as being “everywhere the dark touches” as they “open envelopes of reality” where they walk. They’re also seen as “sanctioned super predators” who are known to “peek into the houses for something lit to steal” and, through the viewer’s judgments, the yous of the poem are marginalized and forced into a space where they become a vessel for fear and disgust that is made to vanish or linger as a monstrous other; they are made out to be nothing short of Black zombies.
“Zombi” leaves a reader frustrated and haunted by a sense of hopelessness that’s driven home by the repetition of “it is what it is” that is both a present situation that the poem’s you is afflicted with, the repetition is also a perpetual “truth on grandma’s grave” that stretches both backwards in history and forwards in time as a lingering wound and constant threat. The duration of this hopelessness, of this continued judgment and burden, is clearly generational: it is a burden passed on in perpetuity and seems to be incurable — undying like the undead from which this poem takes its name. “No one can get rid of,// this space you have become,” the poem tells you. “No one owns this” they’re told, a clear condemnation of systemic failure to change who dictates what Black bodies are, so the problem persists in a horrifying space, undying and unliving, where “you all morph into that place…nobody can get rid of” and maintaining a perpetual Black zombie apocalypse for those bodies seen as monstrous.
Cocktail:
Zombi Apocolypse
The couple approaching you
on sidewalk believes in beauty borne by
distance, the frozen pine, the half-moon’s tryst
with dark greenery.
You camouflage then
you background fade, invisible to them
in the boundary, the distance dying
down, and making your way
from different places
to different places, you all morph
into that place by the park,
the baying dog, the rabbit in shadow.— ”Black Zombi”
Bryan Byrdlong
Boulevard, Vol. 36, Nos 2 & 3
The Zombi Apocalypse cocktail is one-part Haitian myth and two-parts American ideology. That is, it’s a riff on the classic Zombie Tiki drink but made with Haitian Rum and Tennessee bourbon. The bourbon used, Uncle Nearest, is special because it’s from a distillery that’s not only Black owned and operated but works to elevate the story of Nathan “Nearest” Green – a slave before he became a freed man – to the forefront of American whiskey history. Haiti, too, is important to the cocktail as the word “zombie” originated from the slave fields as a curse and a threat from the slave drivers, themselves slaves and sometimes voodoo priests, to deter slaves from committing suicide or else their bodies would work the fields forever in undeath.
The Zombi Apocalypse contains both of these potent histories and spirits, along with 151 proof demerara rum (named for the Demerara River near which the rum is distilled). The cocktail is delicious, refreshing—and potent. After only one, the body will become discombobulated, moving in jerks and stutters. After two of these drinks—beware! The drinker will morph into a semblance of death, shambling along as if dead… or in need of a nap.
Zombi Apocalypse
2oz Uncle Nearest 1856
1oz Aged Rhum Barbancourt (Haitian Rum)
1oz 151-proof demerara Rum
0.5oz Velvet Falernum
0.5oz Orange Curacao
0.75oz Cinnamon Syrup*
0.5oz Grapefruit Juice
0.5oz Lime Juice
0.5oz Lemon Juice
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
Add all of the ingredients together to a shaker, add ice, and shake for 10-15 seconds.
Strain into a tall glass (tiki or otherwise), a straw and top with crushed ice. Garnish with a generous bouquet of mint.
Note:
*Add 6oz of sugar to 5oz of water in a pan with two 4” cinnamon sticks (about 5g; break them apart before adding). Heat over medium until the sugar is dissolved then simmer over medium/medium-low for 15 minutes - do not boil. Then remove from heat and allow to cool before straining and bottling.