Lauren Tivey

Central Hospital, Port-au-Prince, 1937

It lurches into the sun-bleached yard
on dusty, cracked feet, yellow-clawed,
drab linen shift over a bony frame, limbs
reckless, akimbo, a terrifying ragdoll,
blank black face with empty eyes, floating
nightmare head on a stick of a neck. Zora
views this wreckage of a once-woman, this
animated corpse pitching before her, hears
dreadful guttural emissions from its throat,
and—ever the pro—grasps her Kodak tighter,
fingerprints smearing the Bakelite case,
chides herself for courage in the name
of anthropology. The only thing to do
in the face of the fiend: get the shot
and run, practically pissing herself,
toward safety. Later, in the darkroom,
a blotch blooming in the acid bath,
saturated paper floating, undulant
shadows. And then, black hellebore
face emerging, an ink smudge, devoid.
Zora lights a cigarette; slow exhale
through the nostrils, sly smile curling
at the edge of her scarlet lips.

Note: Author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston traveled to Haiti to study folklore and voodoo in the 1930s; while there, she learned of the case of real-life “zombie,” Felicia Felix Mentor, and photographed her. The photo appeared in LIFE Magazine in December, 1937.

LAUREN TIVEY is a Pushcart nominated poet of three chapbooks, most recently The Breakdown Atlas & Other Poems. Her work has appeared in Connotation Press, The Coachella Review, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications in the U.S. and U.K. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College, in St. Augustine, Florida.