Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine #12

(Marx) My Son Pointed at the Tombstones and Said “Is it called a cementery because those are made of ‘cement’?”

I told him it’s called a cemetery.

He asked what “cemetery” means.

So I looked up the etymology and told him the word means “to put to sleep.” He pointed at the ground and said, “Are the people down there sleeping?”

I said yes. He asked when they were going to wake up.

I said that they don’t have to go to work anymore, so they can sleep forever now. My son thought about that and then he said, “Do any of them decide that they’d rather go back to work?” I said, “Yes, and those are called zombies.” My wife swatted my shoulder. A few months later a zombie movie came on TV and my son said, “Look at all the workers!”

Ron Riekki Ron Riekki is the author of My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction, U.P.: a novel, and Posttraumatic: A Memoir.