Zombie Haiku by R. Mecum

Normally when Jackie has an impulse buy at Barnes and Noble, I roll my eyes and scold her for spending money when she has a shelf of unread books. Unfortunately for me, this time she picked one that immediately captured my attention – Ryan Mecum’s Zombie Haiku: Good Poetry for Your…Brains.

Perfect for zombiephiles, video game addicts, grindhouse nostalgists, and horror movie fanatics, Zombie Haiku is the touching story of a zombie’s gradual decay told through the intimate poetry of haiku. From infection to demise, readers will accompany the narrator on a zen journey through deserted streets and barracaded doors for every eye-popping, gut-wrenching, flesh-eating moment right up until the inevitable bullet to the brain. Plus the book is illustrated with over 50 photos from the zombie’s eye and designed with extra blood, guts and pus!

The cover and layout stood out from her standard fare, and when I paged through, I was pleased to find it was more than just another zombie story – it was something unique. The book is written by a poet who’d been bitten by a zombie in the waning days of the Zombie Apocalypse. He tells the story of his attacker in the form of 5-7-5 Haiku; from the moment his attacker was turned, until he was attacked. To give you a taste of the delicious innards of this book, I picked a random haiku for you to devour:

My instinct steers me
to my gourmet dinner feast,
a nursing home.

Little old ladies
speed away in their wheelchairs
frightened meals on wheels

Inside the book is a bloodstained collection of scrap paper with haikus, snapshots, scribbles, and gobs of hair caught in the tape that hold it all together. It’s more than just the storytelling of the haikus that is special – it’s the packaging. This is definitely one you’d want to get in paperback form rather than digital. It lends to the creepy “barely surviving” feel of the book. Visual aspects aside, the haikus themselves are outstanding – reading one after another, you soon forget how structured they are as it becomes a flowing story.

I’d never really considered the inner workings of a zombie’s mind; after all, zombies are mindless, right? Well, Mecum saw what I didn’t; just because they seem mindless doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking – they just can’t express themselves. The haikus provide rationale for the seemingly dumb zombie behavior, discussing things like “what happens if you fortify yourself in a well stocked fortress?” and “why do you always run into zombies of people you know?”

For me, the timing was perfect of a Zombie Haiku is perfect as its a month before Halloween and I’m in a zombie mood. My final words on this book:

Cover to cover,
zombie book amuses me.
Buy Haiku right now.

About Jesse 29 Articles
The Master and Overlord or better known as the hubby who keeps LE running. He rarely reviews, but he's the one who keeps everything running smoothly from the IT perspective.

6 Comments

  1. From what I’ve seen, it’s hilarious. This is the first book in awhile that Jesse beat me in reading. I was planning on reading it this week and he snagged it first.

  2. Kris, by all means, click on the link in the text so jackie can get some delicious referral money so I can buy a new guitar- er, I meanm buy clothes for our kid…

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