Ocho #19 [Paperback]

Didi Menendez (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2008

Featuring Ivy Alvarez, Tara Birch, Elizabeth Bradfield, Blake Butler, Courtney J. Campbell, Peter Ciccariello, Laurel K. Dodge, AnnMarie Eldon, Adam Fieled, Billy Howell-Sinnard, David Krump, Miguel Murphy, Andy Nicholson, P.F. Potvin, Meghan Punschke, William Stobb, Ray Sweatman, Mike Young, Kemel Zaldivar. Cover art by I.M. Bess.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Didi Menendez is the publisher of MiPOesias Magazine, OCHO and Oranges & Sardines. She is a Cuban-born American author and artist.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (March 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1438203551
• ISBN-13: 978-1438203553
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,337,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Didi Menendez is a Cuban born (1960) American artist and poet. She is a pioneer in online publishing since 1998. Her literary journals and magazines have been recognized by the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Her poetry books include When I Said Goodbye (BlazeVOX Books, edited by Geoffrey Gatza, 2008) and a self-published chapbook For Love of an Armadillo which include illustrations by artist Jeremy Baum (2009).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars OCHO #19, January 31, 2009

By 

Melissa D. Mcewen "Missy" (Bloomfield, Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ocho #19 (Paperback)

OCHO #19 - Published by Didi Menendez

OCHO #19, published Spring 2008, is a fantastic read for Halloween. On the cover, a girl with worms in her hair is screaming. The cover is a forewarning of what's to come: dark and grotesque images in poems so bizarre, they are like something from a bad dream. Didi Menendez' disclaimer mentions that this "issue was taking on a lovely macabre...feel."

The poems in this issue fit together perfectly. Most poems feature gruesome, nightmarish imagery. Even Billy Howell-Sinnard's poem The Butcher, about the day in the life of a butcher, when placed in this collection of poems, becomes scary:

"I split rib cages, sever heads--eyes still open.
Trunks and limbs hang on hooks. Between me

and my customers, ice-breathed freezer chests
stacked with tongues, ribs, rumps, legs,
shoulders,

thighs, breasts, and brains. A femur. A Pelvis.
Sawdust. All the same to me. The rosy flesh..."

Becoming Bull by Kemel Zaldivar, however, is downright strange and leaves me feeling spooked:

"I stabbed a pregnant cow...,
cut her open and tore out her calf."
Another poem by Kemel Zaldivar Meeting People is Easy, is even stranger:

"All that remains of Mercy is her head,
in the freezer, with the
fish...

Elena was nice; her Guatemalan eyes
float in a jar on the
dresser...

Nancy fell asleep under water.
She surfaced with no
limbs and swam
to the pier...

Eating people is easy. They get
cozy in the stomach."
My!

And that's not all. There is more where that came from. Miguel Murphy's Ramona & The Devil Rooster Lover:

"The girl loved her black rooster with the sun under its chin.
When she carried it under her arm...,
it went mad & slashed her
face...

The girl touched her cuts & dreamt knives
flew through the air where she willed them. She was the Carnival Knife-
Thrower-Woman, impaling red apples on weak men's heads."

Ocho #19 is the weird sideshow at the fair, where, when there, you might run into the petrified man from Eudora Welty's story of the same name:

"...But they got this man, this petrified man, that ever'thing ever since he was nine years old, when it goes through his digestion, see, ... it goes to his joints and has been turning to stone."