Mortal logic by Larisa Svirsky

Death stops for no one except maybe Emily Dickinson in May 1886
The rest of us are zombies, I mean that’s what follows, right?
and I keep running like maybe it’s going to save me but
I know from zombie movies running doesn’t help
although zombies are undead and maybe
Death is dead so I stop for Death and
I say Hey, I’m closed, I’m closed
to Death, closed as in not open
as in you’re not allowed
to make me one
of you
yet

Larisa Svirsky is a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Voices, Smartish Pace, and The Ocean State Review. Her chapbook, Mission, recently won the Sheila Ortiz Taylor Chapbook Competition and will be published by the OIA Arts Press.