Havilah Barnett
The Dead are Rising
After the Uniform
I no longer cry
for the neighbor’s dog,
tree-tied, gasping.
For winter’s steel
pulsing hot against
the old woman’s throat.
Instead
I swarm
medicine cabinets. Gulp
the human with zoloft.
Not a brain
unrolled,
am the zombie
the pit, the twelve
-foot hunger.
To begin again,
please. Face-blur
pink with sky.
“I wrote ‘The Dead are Rising’ while grappling with a lot of anxiety/depression around unnecessary suffering from ongoing wars—thinking specifically about children and societal expectations for women to give birth. ‘After the Uniform’ (originally titled ‘Zoloft’) speaks to my experience of starting medication after coming home from a deployment, namely the frustrations of feeling everything versus being numb.” —Havilah Barnett
Havilah Barnett is a poet and MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her poetry explores trauma, mental illness, and the effects of mutism in a deafening world. She’s currently an Editor for TIMBER Journal and was previously an emergency medical technician for both the Army and a civilian ambulance service. Havilah loves sharing space with animals and experiencing life as a highly sensitive empath.