poems from Zombie Vomit Mad Libs

Poetry / Duy Đoàn

 

:: poems from Zombie Vomit Mad Libs ::

[Climate Changed]

                                               The earth is a star.

 

 

 

We’re already dead.


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[Zom­bie]

One had this prob­lem where they were always look­ing for the radius of things.

 

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[Zombie]                                 




                                      The crossing over was slow




                                                                                  She couldn't remember.
                                                                                  She couldn't
                                                                                  forget.
 

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[Zom­bie Babies]


(love let­ter,                          one baby to anoth­er):




hot damn
ur not fuck­ing around
u real­ly know how to see things
thru

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                                                           [Zombie Babies]

                                                           (love letter,
                                                                                 the other baby to the first
                                                                                 baby):

                                                           I like that you use the
                                                           infinitive

                                                           that way we don't have to worry
                                                           about their conjugations
                                                           when you're an outcast you can
                                                           only really trust the other
                                                           outcasts

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        [zzzzz Zombies]

        The thing is

        they were all wearing masks           when they were asleep                    .



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[Zombies]

emaciating cat staring out the window

(wind chimes jingling)
 

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                                               [Zombies at a Cross Signal]

                                                                                                                       . . . .

                                               candy apple. For in our hearts we are


                                               go      children

                                               slow

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[Zombie]

                                               Her hair is radiant.      Like, radiant

                                   radiant. It has that post-illness hasn't-been-

                                   washed glow to it.


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           [Zombies]

In the next world, there's a line of haircare products called
Convalescence:

           Crack (Dandruff Control)
           Luminol (Tea Tree Oil 60% Real)
           Glowstick (with Yuccalyptus®)

and cocaine is on the endangered species list.


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[Alcoholism]

pregame = blunt force trauma
blunt force trauma blunt force trauma = postgame postgame
= still functional organs after resurrection


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        [Two Zombies]

                    Look how even now he pretends to be her little synesthete.

        His truthlessness
        never mattered. Their toxicity neither.


        They meander and bump into things;
        connection's still real.

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                                   [Zombie]

                         His vomit hit the top of the lectern and then the bottom so
                         quickly it sounded like a trochee.

                                                                                                 ticktock

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[Zombies]

emaciating cat staring out the window

(wind chimes jingling)


_________________________________________________________________________________

[Zombie]



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[Zombie]



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[Zom­bie]


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[Zombie]



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[Zombie]


Maybe then she remembers
                                                           briefly



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[Zombie]

she once saw the northern lights.

 

 

 

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From the writer

 

:: Account ::

 

i                                                                                                                                   

These zom­bies wan­der through­out my col­lec­tion, Zom­bie Vom­it Mad Libs (Alice James Books, Novem­ber 12, 2024).

The zom­bies most­ly mind their own busi­ness, meandering—sometimes togeth­er, some­times alone.

ii                                                                                                                                    

Hor­ror is my favorite movie genre. Zom­bie movies are one of my least favorite hor­ror sub­gen­res. I can name only three zom­bie movies I admire and only one that I love. It’s not that I dis­like the zom­bie as a mon­ster in nar­ra­tive. I actu­al­ly think they’re cool and essen­tial to lore about the super­nat­ur­al. It’s just that I find most zom­bie movies uninteresting—so many zom­bie movies are lit­tle more than bor­ing action flicks, cliché alle­gories, or sil­ly gore fests.

When I first start­ed writ­ing the poems that even­tu­al­ly became this book, I wasn’t writ­ing zom­bie poems. Most of the poems I was writ­ing were about artists who com­mit­ted sui­cide (actor Leslie Che­ung and many poets), mad libs, and rela­tion­ships (lit­tle the­atres of romance, fam­i­ly, and friend­ship). As I was writ­ing, I nev­er thought about the poems becom­ing a col­lec­tion until they began gath­er­ing momen­tum togeth­er, in small bunch­es, and com­mon images and themes start­ed emerg­ing.

Some fun things kept hap­pen­ing. Epi­gram­mat­ic zom­bie sketch­es would show up from time to time in between writ­ing the oth­er poems. (I like to think that the sketch­es are like the epi­gram­mat­ic poems in Marie Howe’s Mag­da­lene, a big inspi­ra­tion of mine.) Look­ing back, I think these zom­bie poems were my own rewrit­ing of the zom­bie movie, writ­ing zom­bie mythol­o­gy the way I like.

iii                                                                                                                                  Vam­pire movies are my favorite hor­ror sub­genre. Many are lush and eye catch­ing, have strong themes, and are about romance (my sec­ond favorite movie genre). (I’m not includ­ing Twi­light.)

Prob­a­bly one of the biggest influ­ences on me as far as poet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty and love of film is Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home at Night, a Per­sian-lan­guage Amer­i­can West­ern hor­ror film. Amirpour’s mag­ic is mes­mer­iz­ing. Her tim­ing and fresh eye for con­nec­tion becomes evi­dent in her abil­i­ty to weave togeth­er a wide range of emotions—the dif­fer­ent types of emo­tions elicit­ed by meet cutes, wry humor, vio­lence, or tragedy.

There’s a skill­ful restraint in her han­dling of scenes and in her han­dling of the vam­pire sto­ry. She doesn’t get into the whole mess of trite tropes that oth­er vam­pire movies fall into. She nev­er seems con­cerned with com­ing up with her own unique ele­ments of vam­pire mythology—how to han­dle mir­rors, how to han­dle gar­lic, how to han­dle stakes, how to han­dle infec­tion, how to han­dle the sun. In a way, Amirpour’s vam­pire, who is the voice of jus­tice in the film, is just a girl who walks home alone at night, adven­tur­ing and then bring­ing her roman­tic inter­est along for the ride.

I hope Ana Lily Amir­pour will direct a zom­bie movie one day. Maybe I hope that because it’s too bad I don’t like zom­bie movies more. What­ev­er hap­pens, I owe a huge debt to Amir­pour because she inspired my zom­bie poems in a way that helped me like zom­bies more.

Duy Đoàn (pro­nounced zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game (Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press), win­ner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lamb­da Lit­er­ary Award. Duy’s work has appeared in the Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets Poem-a-Day, Keny­on Review, The Mar­gins, and Poet­ry. He received an MFA in poet­ry from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty. His sec­ond col­lec­tion, Zom­bie Vom­it Mad Libs, is forth­com­ing from Alice James Books, Novem­ber 12, 2024.