Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Santa Tarantula
    Santa Tarantula
    Santa Tarantula
    Ebook77 pages27 minutes

    Santa Tarantula

    By Jordan Pérez

    ()

    Read preview

    About this 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Notre Dame Press
    Release dateFeb 1, 2024
    ISBN9780268207502
    Santa Tarantula
    Author

    Jordan Pérez

    Jordan Pérez works professionally in online safety and childhood sexual abuse prevention. She has an MFA in creative writing from American University and has published poetry in Poetry Magazine, Cutthroat, Poetry International, Mississippi Review, and more.

    Related to Santa Tarantula

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Rails

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Rails
      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      cook lobster. They’re loyal sea rubies and deservebetter than a pinch of lemon and herbed butter. But I’ll shower hot enough to brighten you, makezinnias of your shoulders and steal the towels when it’s over, your water-tattooed back a garden before

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2023

      Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

      1 min read

    • Article

      An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List

      Jun 8, 2020

      These recent poetry collections offer poignant narratives and snapshots of racial injustice in America. The post An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      i look like someonehealing from an accidentbecause i am someonehealing from an accidentthe book of actsscales falling from saul’s eyesremembering my capacityfor stillnesshow long can i sitwithout looking awaythe fear of god escapingi desperately need

      3 min read

    • Article

      Younger Than War

      Nov 9, 2023

      Younger Than War
      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2022

      A prayer begins & endseach meeting, it starts with the word God& ends with the word difference. The difference, as far as I can tell,between what is offered & what is possible is a chasm. At times it seemswe simply run out of places to be, until we c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Toward A Unified Theory

      Jan 1, 2022

      Condemned to live inside the weatherof our moods What are you doing? Filling this bucket with waterand dumping it into the water They can’t excavate the amphitheater further because it extends backbeneath the houses We close their eyes not for thembu

      2 min read

    • Article

      Burning Up

      Dec 1, 2021

      Burning Up
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Ceremony

      Sep 6, 2022

      It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. M

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Early such darkness, these oncoming nights& sure, I’m dull & even slow to concedehow mornings make equal, swerving measuresthere between those foremost shadowsalong the fence, amid the chickens & nerve,sheep & their indifference to any pair of foolsh

      3 min read

    • Article

      Bless Your Soup

      Jan 1, 2022

      I am doing the work of healing.As in:I cry to early-2000s Paula DeAnda.I wash the towels from our apartment.I find your resume onlineand critique it harshly for a ghost audience. I come up with new names for emotions, likeDISLODGED FITTED SHEET orDAM

      1 min read

    • Article

      Rot

      Sep 2, 2022

      Rot
      1 min read

    • Article

      All I Know

      Jul 1, 2022

      The Statue of Liberty was packed in crates of lentilsand there is a species of catfish with scalesso tough that piranhas can’t chew throughto red softness. I’m thinking of what is vital,today. The willow tree in my dreams that swaysand a little girl

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      for Brenda Shaughnessy The news isn’t good, and neither of us feelslike pretending, though the list of what we hope forgrows longer by the day. More news, goodor otherwise, everything witnessed by the lightof fires, and something we cherished alwaysb

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Sometimes I feel like I’m writing the scorefor a film that doesn’t yet exist, but everything that will happenin the film will happen to me. Is this what they call plot? This dailypicking up of the same things— glasses, coffee cup, pen, book, keys—and

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • Article

      What Living In A House Is Like

      May 1, 2022

      Standing in each stanza—no, I’m sorry—room. Standing in each room waslike standing in a tester stroke of wall paint. All these blobs of colors in rows and columns, the size of thumbs.Together—a portrait of potential. But blues leaped to yellow leaped

      1 min read

    • Article

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

      Feb 6, 2024

      Bang out hundreds of pages of rhyming couplets about something other than your identity or your perceptions, and you, too, will likely fall out of love with lyric poetry. The post Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Chinese Word for Sorry

      Mar 1, 2022

      My mother holds her apology in one hand, bowl of cut fruit bursting from her palm as if she were the tree whose branches bore blood rush apples, bruise purple pears, unholy screams of persimmons torn from sun, instead of a daughter without accent onl

      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Mar 15, 2022

      a ghost is hangingfrom the doorpostof our past— can you see it?it has wounds—it’s bleedingyears from its mouth [.] when we left ourhouses that aprilit was for history’s pleasure— twice the war wasin far-flung townsthen it grew a light foot and veered

      1 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      nothing so lonely as the hospitalbed. nothing so lonely as beinglonely in the hospital bed. nothingso jargoned as the body sproutingbrush tuber cannula or rue. nothingso pure as the abstracted by which Imean exploded body, the body thatholds its skin

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Definition of Poetry

      Oct 9, 2024

      The Definition of Poetry
      11 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jul 1, 2024

      I can’t understand, after years of reading, the relevanceof metaphysics. How does it account for the wants of my mind breaking apart my body? I prefer to think of poppies,the variety fated to bloom blood-red. Or, of planting poppies, any flowers in t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hilltop

      Dec 7, 2021

      Returning to the very same place,let it be a hilltopwith a view of the night city where once you used to be,when your “whole life”still lay ahead of you,when everything was before. Returning—when it’s already after:irrevocably, decisively.What a stra

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Santa Tarantula

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Santa Tarantula - Jordan Pérez

      Cover: Santa Tarantula, published by University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana.

      Santa

      Tarantula

      The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

      2004, Pity the Drowned Horses, Sheryl Luna

      Final Judge: Robert Vasquez

      2006, The Outer Bands, Gabriel Gomez

      Final Judge: Valerie Martínez

      2008, My Kill Adore Him, Paul Martínez Pompa

      Final Judge: Martín Espada

      2010, Tropicalia, Emma Trelles

      Final Judge: Silvia Curbelo

      2012, A Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying, Laurie Ann Guerrero

      Final Judge: Francisco X. Alarcón

      2014, Furious Dusk, David Campos

      Final Judge: Rhina P. Espaillat

      2016, Of Form & Gather, Felicia Zamora

      Final Judge: Edwin Torres

      2018, The Inheritance of Haunting, Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

      Final Judge: Ada Limón

      2022, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes

      Final Judge: John Murillo

      2024, Santa Tarantula, Jordan Pérez

      Final Judges: Alexandra Lytton Regalado and Sheila Maldonado

      The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, named after the late California native and author of the award-winning book, The Iceworker Sings, supports the publication of a first book by a Latino or Latina poet. Awarded every other year, the prize is administered by Letras Latinas—the literary program of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

      Santa

      Tarantula

      Jordan Pérez

      University of Notre Dame Press

      Notre Dame, Indiana

      Copyright © 2024 by Jordan Pérez

      Published by the University of Notre Dame Press

      Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

      undpress.nd.edu

      All Rights Reserved

      Published in the United States of America

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2023946670

      ISBN: 978-0-268-20751-9 (Hardback)

      ISBN: 978-0-268-20752-6 (Paperback)

      ISBN: 978-0-268-20753-3 (WebPDF)

      ISBN: 978-0-268-20750-2 (Epub3)

      This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [email protected]

      For all who cling to the light

      Contents

      Acknowledgements

      Introduction to the Poems, by Alexandra Regalado Lytton

      I. SMALLMOUTH

      Smallmouth

      Twelve

      Your Father Knew Many Women

      The Masculinity Camps

      Deadgirl

      Knockout Rose

      In This Story

      Body

      The Men

      Mixed-Up Sestina

      Tamar

      A Desolate Woman

      Men Everywhere Are Setting Traps

      The Glory Has Departed

      Lot’s Daughter

      Letter to My Grandfather in April

      II. DISSENT

      O God of Cuba

      Dissent

      Santa Tarantula

      Delilah

      Becoming Wild

      The Dream

      Gomer

      Jael

      I Consider Violence

      Wanting

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

      Bathymetry

      How to Be the Other Woman

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1