Happy Halloween from Rumpus Poetry, where we’re pleased to offer you David Hernandez’s take on William Carlos Williams’s well known poem “This is just to say.” Enjoy your candy.
This Is Just To Say I’m a Zombie
I have eaten your scrumptious face, through
the plums of cheeks, juicy recollections
that were in your hippocampus. Remember Kool-Aid in
the icebox and how they rubied your lips? Of course you don’t
and which of us always will is, well, obvious. I’m guessing
you were probably thinking you were
saving time by crossing the graveyard to meet your mother
for breakfast at Marty’s Diner. She’s still waiting.
Forgive me if I devour her brain too. Those I’ve had already:
they were delicious and ripe with memories. I was
so sweet when I was human, way on the shy side,
and so cold to adventure. Look at me now: ravenous for experience.
—David Hernandez
David Hernandez is the recipient of a 2011 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. His recent collection, Hoodwinked, won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and is now available from Sarabande Books. His other collections include Always Danger (SIU Press, 2006), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, and A House Waiting for Music (Tupelo Press, 2003). His poems have appeared in FIELD, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Poetry Daily, The Best American Poetry 2013 and Puschart Prize XXXVIII. He is also the author of two YA novels, No More Us for You and Suckerpunch, both published by HarperCollins. David teaches creative writing at California State University, Long Beach and at California State University, Fullerton. He lives in Long Beach and is married to writer Lisa Glatt. Visit his website at www.DavidAHernandez.com.
