Santa Tarantula, livre ebook

The poems in Santa Tarantula grant an urgent and haunting voice to the voiceless, explore ancient narratives, delve into Cuban history and identity, and confront trauma and violence.

Jordan Pérez explores the tension between fear and reprieve, between hopelessness and light, in her debut collection, Santa Tarantula, the tenth winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Pérez lends voices to the forgotten: to the political dissidents, gay men, and religious minorities imprisoned in the forced-labor camps of 1960s Cuba; to biblical women who were deemed unworthy to name; to survivors of sexual violence who grapple with paralyzing fear and isolation.

With rich detail, these poems weave together the stories of those who go unheard with family memories, explore moments of unspeakable tragedy with glimpses of a life beyond the trauma, and draw out what it means to be vulnerable and the strength it takes to endure. Santa Tarantula pushes through the darkness, cataloging unspoken pain and multigenerational damage, and revealing that, sometimes, survival is in the telling.

Your Father Knew Many Women

And they flourished,
his apricot grove.
Glowing after dark, they webbed
together in soft gossips.
They were themselves
hungry. You’ll call them lonely, or sad,
but you can’t say which you hoped to be
true. The summer you turned 12,
you thought of little else, but how he was
an excellent farmer. Apricots will take
whatever they can get if they are truly
hungry enough.
You said you understood the situation.
There is nothing like a man
with slender hands.
You visited them to ask
what he was like, to check
them for scrapes from the large borer
bug. You carried a salve at all times.

On the bus, an old woman cradles
something in a brown paper bag.
You wait for the briny scream of fish
or the glow of an egg tart,
but all she is holding is her own hand.

Letter to My Grandfather in April

I have you to thank
for these inheritances:

a chopped plum
still bleeding;

dark pipe tobacco
leaking from its box,

strung cowrie shells
glistening like virgins.

Papa, your hands are now
my father’s hands,

your bruisebelt is his own.
We are running through the wheat

off 78, two generations
of quiet

sucking each other’s pain
as you might a snakebite.

My father has thrown his funeral
jacket over the car antenna

and it waits there like an accident.
We pretend to miss its darkness.

We tear apart the wheat,
cry like new mothers.

Part 1. Smallmouth

Smallmouth

Twelve

Your Father Knew Many Women

The Masculinity Camps

Deadgirl

Knockout Rose

In This Story

Body

The Men

Mixed-Up Sestina

Tamar

Men Everywhere Are Setting Traps

A Desolate Woman

The Glory Has Departed

Letter to My Grandfather in April

Lot’s Daughter

Part 2. Dissent

O God of Cuba

Dissent

Santa Tarantula

Becoming Wild

Delilah

The Dream

Gomer

I Consider Violence

Jael

Wanting

New Study Say Men Who Do Dishes Are Less Likely to Kill You

Bathymetry

How to Be the Other Woman

The Woman with Wounded Hands

Chicken Heart

Crossing

Misplaced

Part 3. Gospel

Genesis

I Was Named for the River of Blessings

Upended

Pilgrimage

Asymptote

Theodore Roosevelt Island

Herding Tent Caterpillars

Rejoice

This Is What the Girl Really Wants

Things to Cling To

Liturgy

The Gospel According to the Girl

Acknowledgements