scenes along the zombie highway by g.o. clark
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Available in Trade
Paperback and Ebook
on DarkRegions.com
and Amazon.com
From the Bram Stoker Award nominated poet of Shroud of Night,
Strange Vegetables, Bone Sprockets, 25 Cent Rocket Ship To The
Stars and The Other Side of the Lens comes a new collection of 42
poems in the realm of the undead. Full of humor, charm and chilling
imagery, Scenes Along the Zombie Highway by G.O. Clark strikes the
perfect balance of levity, commentary and horror in the realm of the
living dead.
Zombies! There are all kinds of zombies out there these days, from the
slow-witted, slow-moving kind, to the more steroid pumped-up
versions of recent film and TV. In Scenes Along the Zombie Highway,
you'll encounter the living dead in all their ragged, rotten glory, and
upon finishing the book, leave with a twisted smile upon your face.
Praise for Scenes Along the Zombie Highway:
"G. O. Clark's Scenes Along the Zombie Highway is stylish, chilling,
clever and sly. Beware: it will eat your brain and have your sense of the
absurd for dessert." - Mary A. Turzillo, Nebula Award winner,
Rhysling Award finalist, author of Lovers and Killers.
"Grisly and smartly funny! G. O. Clark renders the juiciest bits of
modern zombie lore into ironic, poignant, and often wry reflections of
modern society filtered through a warped sense of humor we all hope
the walking dead will have when the zombie apocalypse finally
arrives." - James Chambers, author of Corpse Fauna and The
Engines of Sacrifice.
SCENES ALONG THE ZOMBIE HIGHWAY
G. O. Clark
Illustrated by Marge Simon
Dark Regions Press 2013
Poems in this collection appeared in slightly different form in the following:
"Zombie Eyes," "Saturday Night Social Scene," "Some Advice to Prospective Zombies" were published in Mor‐tician's Tea, 2009, Sam's Dot Publishing.
"Dead Eyes In the Rearview Mirror," "Some Zombies One Should Avoid," "Little Zombies," "Two Drink Mini‐mum," "Zombie On A Leash" were published in Shroud Of Night, 2011, Dark Regions Press.
"The Carolers" was published in Star*Line, Fall 2012.
All the other poems included are original to this collec‐tion.
Dark Regions Poetry Five Editor: Bruce Boston
First Edition ISBN‐13: 978‐1‐62641‐001‐5 ISBN‐10: 1‐62641‐001‐1
Text copyright © 2013 by G. O. Clark
Cover art copyright © 2013 by Alex McVey Text art copyright © 2013 by Marge Simon
Dark Regions Press
300 E. Hersey Street, #10 A Ashland, OR 97520
www.darkregions.com
Contents
7 At the Tipping Point
9 Little Zombies
10 The Carolers
11 New Moon/No Pulse
12 The Picnic Is Over
13 Seasons of the Living Dead
15 Saturday Night Social Scene
16 Zombiemobile
17 Zombie Clowns
19 The Ventriloquist
21 You Just Can't Get Good Help Anymore
22 Slapstick
23 Pool Party
24 Night Parade
25 Zombie on a Leash
26 Zombie Loner
27 Scarecrow
29 Writer's Block
30 Roadside Shrines
31 The Library
34 Zombies Crossing
36 Road Kill
37 Albino
38 Rag Doll
40 Clothes Make the Zombie
41 A Stop along the Post‐Apocalyptic Tour
42 The Curse of the Aware Zombie
43 Zombie Eyes
44 Reanimated
46 Some Things Zombies Suck At
47 Some Advice to Prospective Zombies
49 Breaking News
50 Playtime's Over
51 Two Drink Minimum
52 Bottom of the Ninth
54 Old Flame
55 Dead Eyes in a Rearview Mirror
56 Road Trip Advice
57 All in the Family
58 Some Zombies One Should Avoid
60 Quotes from the Zombie Fact Book
62 The Last Zombie
SCENES ALONG THE ZOMBIE HIGHWAY
At the Tipping Point
You're in a cheap cafe,
eating the breakfast special, sipping
watered down coffee, when you
notice the guy at the far end
of the counter.
He looks old, but seems
young; hair uncombed, skin
a sickly gray, dark suit looking
slept in, both hands shakily raising
a coffee cup to his lips.
You think, poor guy,
tossed out on the street by his
wife, on the edge of losing his job,
likely spent the night on a park bench,
just trying to get by.
Eating your greasy‐spoon fare,
you wonder if you should start up
a conversation with him, give an ear
to his verbal blues; two guys
just trying to survive.
Before you can follow through,
he lunges over the counter at the poor
waitress, bends her over his untouched
breakfast, and starts gnawing on her
face, biting deeper and deeper
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as if trying to get inside
her skull to feast on her brains,
scrambled eggs no longer appetizing.
In time the big picture will come into
focus, the consequences of the
incurable, mutated virus become
old news. On this singular morning,
however, you’re ringside at the tipping
point, the end of the status quo,
the rise of the living dead.
8
Little Zombies
It's Halloween night
and all the little zombies
are stumbling from house to house,
pressing doorbells with rotting fingers,
gurgling trick or treat, trick or treat
through yellowed, broken teeth,
bloody bags thrust forward for candy,
pennies and that all time favorite,
slow‐witted human brains,
the adults handing out the goodies
so amused by the cute little zombies
that they never see the trick coming,
each about to become the bloody treat.
9
The Carolers
The zombie carolers
crowd my front doorstep,
their voices slurred,
badly mangling “Jingle Bells,”
the beginning of each chorus
sounding like jellied brains,
jellied brains, need some
right away, while spastically
flailing their arms around and
clumsily marching in place
like decaying wooden soldiers.
10
New Moon/No Pulse
It's the new moon,
and the zombies are sluggish,
milling around on street corners,
stumbling about the cemetery,
wandering aimlessly in the night
in search of fleshy leftovers,
allowing even the weakest human
to dance circles around them,
beneath the star‐bright sky,
the cycle of the heavens like
a ticking clock, the silence inside
each zombie's head complete.
11
The Picnic Is Over
A perfect summer's
day for a simple picnic lunch,
in the solitude of the city cemetery,
away from all the hustle and
bustle of corporate life.
Skyscrapers look down
upon the peaceful afternoon,
giant, hollow cement and glass
tombstones now filled with
the bones of the living.
The mighty buildings
still stand tall, but lifeless.
The cemetery quietly waits,
its headstones toppled, flowers
trampled, graves empty.
Perfect summer days
have given way to endless nights
of flesh eating zombies picnicking
without pause, not even the graves
immune to the madness.
12
13
Seasons of the Living Dead
Come spring
the snow pack melts
and the zombies thaw out,
picking up where they left off
before the winter freeze.
Summertime
is hard on decaying bodies,
the strongest sunscreen no longer
an option, sunglasses useless,
swimwear a bloody joke.
In autumn
the leaves turn, days grow
shorter, nights cooler and the
living dead perform their gruesome
tricks for bloody treats.
Winter brings
huddled nights by the fire,
burnt out Christmas lights, off‐key
zombie carolers in the distance, and an
empty toast to the New Year.
Available in Trade
Paperback and Ebook
on DarkRegions.com
and Amazon.com
Available in Trade Paperback and Ebook on DarkRegions.com and Amazon.com
"G. O. Clark's Scenes Along the Zombie Highway is stylish, chilling, clever and sly. Beware: it will eat your brain and have your sense of the absurd for dessert." - Mary A. Turzillo, Nebula Award winner, Rhysling Award finalist, author of Lovers and Killers.
"Grisly and smartly funny! G. O. Clark renders the juiciest bits of modern zombie lore into ironic, poignant, and often wry reflections of modern society filtered through a warped sense of humor we all hope the walking dead will have when the zombie apocalypse finally arrives." - James Chambers, author of Corpse Fauna and The Engines of Sacrifice.
"Scenes Along the Zombie Highway is an absorbing collection of emotionally poignant poetry. G. O. Clark brings a fresh take to the zombie genre, so if you love zombies, then you will love this book." - Jeani Rector, Editor of The Horror Zine.
"I'm going to guess that G. O. Clark had a good time with the poems in Scenes Along the Zombie Highway. Oh, there is some serious work here, but Mr. Clark is playing at the top of his game...when he's tongue in cheek. A great wry, witty look at the whole zombie craze. Highly recommended." - Gene O'Neill, Stoker winning author of Dance of the Blue Lady and Other Stories.
Scenes Along the Zombie Highway G.O. Clark
G. O. Clark's writing has been published in Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog, Talebones Magazine, Strange Horizons, Space & Time, Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, A Sea Of Alone: Poems For Alfred Hitchcock, Tales Of The Talisman, and many other publications. He's the author of eleven poetry collections, the two most recent, "Shroud of Night", 2011, Dark Regions Press, and, "White Shift", 2012, Sam's Dot Publishing. His fiction collection, "The Saucer Under My Bed & Other Stories", was published by Sam's Dot Publishing in 2011. He won the Asimov's Readers Award for poetry in 2001, and has been a repeat Rhysling and Stoker Award nominee. He's retired, and lives in Davis, CA.
See http://goclarkpoet.weebly.com/ for more info.
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Scenes Along the Zombie Highway G.O. Clark
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G.O. Clark
Alex McVey
Marge Simon
Bruce Boston
9781626410015
POE000000
POETRY / General / Horror
64
42
6
6”x9”
06/04/2013
$9.95 USD
$2.99 USD
DarkRegions.com, Amazon.com
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Scenes Along the Zombie Highway G.O. Clark
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