Poetry review – HAUNT ME: Charles Rammelkamp considers José Enrique Medina’s unusual ways of dealing with grief and loss
Haunt Me
José Enrique Medina
Rattle Poetry, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-931307-62-8
$9.00 42 pages
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Alternately funny and heartbreaking, José Enrique Medina’s Rattle poetry chapbook Haunt Me is all about the dead we carry around with us. In Medina’s case, it’s principally his grandmother, an aunt & uncle, and his mother. Some are remembered affectionately, others not so much. In any case, their memory haunts him, in a way that is familiar to all of us.
In the poem, “Like Rare Pokémon Cards, We Go Through Life Collecting the Dead,” Medina lists the people in his life who have died and whose memories haunt him. The first death is Abuela, his grandmother. In the opening vignette, “Niños de la Tierra,” we first encounter Abuela as a harsh, threatening person, frightening her grandchildren into obedience with horrific tales of the ‘children under the earth’ who, she says, ‘kidnap bad children.’ They are Satan’s children, she warns. ‘They’ll drag you to hell.’
Metaphorically slapping his forehead, Medina writes in the Pokémon poem:
Oh shit! I almost forgot Abuela’s card,
one blind blue eye, one brown eye.
It’s so easy to forget the good ones.
I mean, it’s so much more fun
badmouthing those who wronged us.
Then he goes on to list the others (‘Time passes,’ he ruefully notes, ‘and my binder grows, thick with ghosts.’) Among these dead are Tia Tencha and Tío Arturo. He’s already mentioned these people in “Three Ghosts.” His uncle, Tío Arturo, was a professional boxer. He died from prostate cancer. His aunt died from what sounds like melanoma. (‘Tia Tencha scratches her forehead, the spot where the cancer / started. The scab falls, exposing pink meat.’) In “Pokémon” Medina observes:
They died when I was old enough
to understand death meant
I’d rot like cardboard too.
Finally, there’s the cruelest death of all, his mother:
And this, this is my favorite one:
a photo of my mother.
Sorry I can’t show you.
Some things are too special.
The title poem is written to his mother. ‘What are you waiting for? Haunt me.’ The poem that follows is called “When Mother Doesn’t Visit Me, I Worry” and continues the same sentiment. He truly misses her. “My Mother’s Buried in the Largest Cemetery in North America” and “Even Without a Body” (‘I curl around you, / a tadpole of caresses’) express the same sense of loss, the same grief.
“Dia de los Muertos Baking Contest” is a magical-realism fantasy about a cooking competition on the Day of the Dead (‘Last year, three ghosts—Abuela, Tío Arturo, and Tia Tencha—judged the Dia de los Muertos Baking Contest.’) Medina describes his preparations, sprinkling fresh coconut, his mom’s favorite fruit, setting the timer ‘for 20 minutes and 19 seconds, the year my mom died.’ His mother comes to speak to him as he works against deadline, her face appearing ‘on the curve of the wine glass.’ Her voice is ‘sweet and annoying at the same time.’ The poem ends with an endearment for his dead mother:
I say, I know, Chepis, I know.
In “The Cold of Serious Intent”, Medina quarrels with Tío Arturo, who accuses him of wasting time. He escapes to his mother’s bedroom to get away from the accusations. There, he fondles his mother’s crochet work. He asks:
Why wasn’t I born a woman,
instead of this useless man?
Easy to imagine myself female:
my nose fine and upturned like hers,
eyes soft and sagging. In her closet,
I find a dress, once yellow, now quiet with dust.
It smells bitter like sorry.
I press coarse cloth to my chest,
smooth its weight down my body.
In the mirror, my mother’s eyes
stop me and ask,
Would you dare put on my dress?
“We Interrupt This Book to Bring You an Important Message” is an amusing, if heartbreaking, poem in the middle of the chapbook. It begins: ‘This just in: / un loco has escaped the Hospital / for the Criminally Insane.’ The voice goes on to warn the reader about this man, how to avoid him, and cautioning us not to engage with him. ‘He is considered
armed with grief,
and if provoked by the smallest thing,
will recite a long and violoncello-swayed epic
on how he lost his mother
when he was just 50 years old.
We now return to your regularly scheduled heartache.
The charming thing about Jose Enrique Medina’s poetry is the quality of “magic realism” that pervades the writing. Sometimes Abuela and Tío Arturo and the others seem as real as cars parked on the street or chairs in a living room, and then they disappear like smoke. In the final poem, “Daily Practices”, a kind of list or recipe poem for getting through the day (‘Feed the chickens. Clean the bunnies…Climb into bed. Turn on TV. / Let the canned laughter convince you you’re not alone…’), Medina tells himself to ignore Abuela, Tío Arturo and Tia Tencha when they haunt him.
Tell yourself: The departed are nothing—just sounds
scattered through an open window, things you hear, then forget.
Cross your hands over your chest. Sink into your pillow.
And stay very quiet. Practice being dead, with nothing to do.
Good advice for all of us when we wallow too much in the grief of our losses.
Sep 11 2025
London Grip Poetry Review – José Enrique Medina
Poetry review – HAUNT ME: Charles Rammelkamp considers José Enrique Medina’s unusual ways of dealing with grief and loss
Alternately funny and heartbreaking, José Enrique Medina’s Rattle poetry chapbook Haunt Me is all about the dead we carry around with us. In Medina’s case, it’s principally his grandmother, an aunt & uncle, and his mother. Some are remembered affectionately, others not so much. In any case, their memory haunts him, in a way that is familiar to all of us.
In the poem, “Like Rare Pokémon Cards, We Go Through Life Collecting the Dead,” Medina lists the people in his life who have died and whose memories haunt him. The first death is Abuela, his grandmother. In the opening vignette, “Niños de la Tierra,” we first encounter Abuela as a harsh, threatening person, frightening her grandchildren into obedience with horrific tales of the ‘children under the earth’ who, she says, ‘kidnap bad children.’ They are Satan’s children, she warns. ‘They’ll drag you to hell.’
Metaphorically slapping his forehead, Medina writes in the Pokémon poem:
Then he goes on to list the others (‘Time passes,’ he ruefully notes, ‘and my binder grows, thick with ghosts.’) Among these dead are Tia Tencha and Tío Arturo. He’s already mentioned these people in “Three Ghosts.” His uncle, Tío Arturo, was a professional boxer. He died from prostate cancer. His aunt died from what sounds like melanoma. (‘Tia Tencha scratches her forehead, the spot where the cancer / started. The scab falls, exposing pink meat.’) In “Pokémon” Medina observes:
Finally, there’s the cruelest death of all, his mother:
The title poem is written to his mother. ‘What are you waiting for? Haunt me.’ The poem that follows is called “When Mother Doesn’t Visit Me, I Worry” and continues the same sentiment. He truly misses her. “My Mother’s Buried in the Largest Cemetery in North America” and “Even Without a Body” (‘I curl around you, / a tadpole of caresses’) express the same sense of loss, the same grief.
“Dia de los Muertos Baking Contest” is a magical-realism fantasy about a cooking competition on the Day of the Dead (‘Last year, three ghosts—Abuela, Tío Arturo, and Tia Tencha—judged the Dia de los Muertos Baking Contest.’) Medina describes his preparations, sprinkling fresh coconut, his mom’s favorite fruit, setting the timer ‘for 20 minutes and 19 seconds, the year my mom died.’ His mother comes to speak to him as he works against deadline, her face appearing ‘on the curve of the wine glass.’ Her voice is ‘sweet and annoying at the same time.’ The poem ends with an endearment for his dead mother:
In “The Cold of Serious Intent”, Medina quarrels with Tío Arturo, who accuses him of wasting time. He escapes to his mother’s bedroom to get away from the accusations. There, he fondles his mother’s crochet work. He asks:
“We Interrupt This Book to Bring You an Important Message” is an amusing, if heartbreaking, poem in the middle of the chapbook. It begins: ‘This just in: / un loco has escaped the Hospital / for the Criminally Insane.’ The voice goes on to warn the reader about this man, how to avoid him, and cautioning us not to engage with him. ‘He is considered
The charming thing about Jose Enrique Medina’s poetry is the quality of “magic realism” that pervades the writing. Sometimes Abuela and Tío Arturo and the others seem as real as cars parked on the street or chairs in a living room, and then they disappear like smoke. In the final poem, “Daily Practices”, a kind of list or recipe poem for getting through the day (‘Feed the chickens. Clean the bunnies…Climb into bed. Turn on TV. / Let the canned laughter convince you you’re not alone…’), Medina tells himself to ignore Abuela, Tío Arturo and Tia Tencha when they haunt him.
Good advice for all of us when we wallow too much in the grief of our losses.