The Handyman's Guide to End Times

Poems

Juan J. Morales

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780826359988
• eBook ISBN: 9780826359995
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

In Morales's newest collection, an imagined zombie apocalypse intertwines with personal narrative. From zombie dating to the sin of popcorn ceilings, these poems investigate the nature of impermanence while celebrating the complexities of life.

II. REANIMATION

Your New Haunted House

Your buyer’s remorse is sanding out

raccoon prints tracked in paint through the kitchen

and out the back door.

You will ask the wallpaper not to pull off

the plaster. You will put hands

in between floors

to replace leaky copper pipes.

You move into your investment,

starting with you

on an air mattress in the living room

until you finish a bedroom.

Then renovate the next room

like young newlyweds who don’t believe

in ghosts, oblivious to waking

malevolent phantoms

in the walls and left-behind furniture

stored in the basement.

Except there is no couple.

You’re on your own.

Instead of voices piercing the silence

with “Get out,”

they’re enticing you

to swallow the bitterness.

You’re tempted, but roll up your sleeves

to get your new haunted house cozy enough

to let the ghosts

you brought from the last house

mingle with the ones

already living in the solitude.

My Mother’s Daily Phone Calls

after I got divorced were the same.

We summarized our days,

described the sad meal for one

I cooked on my strict depression diet,

my nonexistent plans

for the weekend that culminated

in the long pause before she’d ask—

“Are you lonely?”

My usual reply,

“Not until you asked me.”

She followed with stinging worry

for my long nights

in the dark, big house that echoed

of no one else here, and how

I slept in an immensely cold bed,

seemingly larger than nightmares, leaving me

tossed in the sinking feeling inside

that could only be defined

as a heart shattering. I always answered, “I’m fine,”

tone tainted with held-back tears that cataloged

the ways I could off myself that very night

if she kept pushing me.

My mother always called me “Juancito,”

and I’d tell her to ask how I was doing

instead of listing every corner

of isolation. When I could finally say to myself,

“You are ordinary in your failings,” I could

honestly tell her I was getting “better.”

She worried less and called less,

leading us to future phone calls

where we could speak past lulls on the line

and mock the fear

of dying and living alone.

Driving to Albuquerque

I’ve made this drive dozens of times,

but it’s been years since I last took

the descent

into la frontera

between mountains and desert,

the city where I used to live.

I quiet for Raton Pass

with its charred trees

stripped of leaves and stop

in a Romeroville gas station

with fresh bathroom graffiti.

I sing till it hurts my throat

to new and old tunes cranked

and mess with the visor

where I-25 curves just north of Santa Fe.

I cry for my selfish loss of love

with the Los Conchas Fire growing in the distance,

while a man I will never know

jumps off a bridge outside of Taos.

Approaching Albuquerque, I notice

that the Sandias, mountains I never

gave enough credit, feel more

jagged and lush.

I pull over

to photograph when the sun hits

the range with the right glow

of October blood.

It is a few weeks before my thirty-first birthday

when I return to the Duke City,

another home away from, where everyone

locks dead bolts, no one drinks from the tap,

or leaves their nice shit

in the car, and it’s all

an arid version of heaven

I didn’t know I missed.

Teaching the Zombie How to Human Again

I wouldn’t have trouble stabbing its resurrected brain,

but I’d rather bring it back to who she was.

I restrain her to a dining room chair,

in front of the table with every family photo

I find in the house

to assemble a memory shrine.

Then I lean close enough

for her to zombie me and plead,

“I see humanity in your eyes.

Why don’t you remember me?”

Death of an Applia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• I. Demolition
• II. Reanimation
• III. Inhabitation
• Acknowledgments