Doan, Duy: Zombie Vomit Mad Libs

Alice James Books, paperback

Publication Date: November 26, 2024

Publisher Marketing: In Zombie Vomit Mad Libs, the climate has changed, and what mostly remains are zombies meandering through a world where we only have brief memories--where connection (human and zombie) is now only made possible thanks to bits of the salvaged wreckage that was left behind in the apocalypse. The poems pay homage to horror movies, riff on childhood mad libs, and scatter Vietnamese diacritics over text about iPhones, neurotransmitters, phobias, substance abuse, fleas, and vomit. The stakes are high: these pages are preoccupied with suicide from the start, especially with the deaths and legacies of poet Anne Sexton and Hong Kong actor/singer Leslie Cheung, but they also find ways to smile and serve from fixed narratives, which is where the zombies come to the forefront, wandering through a world where our only shared experiences are fading memories of the final times we encountered chance momentousness in our lifetimes. Macabre humor is combined with formal inventiveness. Drawing from broad swaths of history, literature, and pop culture, the forms in this book and the rewriting of conventional zombie narratives enable the poems to avoid the presumptuousness of wisdom. The poems instead expend their energy through playfulness, unassuming declarative statements, and sparse questions. Folks who love horror movies, especially the little theaters of love and friendship in these films, might appreciate the candor and arrangement of data in lieu of insight and wisdom.