Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky
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FREE ONLINE BOOK LAUNCH PARTY! Join us for a reading with Juan Manuel Pérez on April 6th!Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky
by Juan Manuel Pérez spotted near Saturn the feathered-serpent starship Aztec god of old From award-winning Mexican-American and Indigenous Texas poet Juan Manuel Pérez comes a scifaiku collection of haiku crowns—linked haiku sequences—exploring identity, indigeneity, and the fantastic. In another world where Aztec gods walk the stars, mermaloids whisper from ocean trenches, and chupacabras roam starlit deserts, BURY MY HEART UNDER THE MARTIAN SKY reimagines the future through the past. With his signature style, Pérez captures the tension between colonization and cosmic conquest, humor and horror, and myth and memory. About the Author
Juan Manuel Pérez, a Mexican-American poet of Indigenous descent and the Poet Laureate for Corpus Christi, Texas (2019–2020), is the author of numerous poetry books including Another Menudo Sunday (2007), O’ Dark Heaven: A Response to Suzette Haden Elgin’s Definition of Horror (2009), WUI: Written Under the Influence of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr. (2011), Live From La Pryor: The Poetry of Juan Manuel Pérez: A Zavala Country Native Son, Volume I (2014), Sex, Lies, and Chupacabras (2015), Space In Pieces (2020), Screw The Wall! And Other Brown People Poems (2020), Planet Of The Zombie Zonnets: Seasons One And Two (2021), Casual Haiku (2022), Christian Haiku For The Daily You (2022), Terror Of The Zombie Zonnets: Planet Of The Zombie Zonnets Season Three (2022), Live From La Pryor: The Poetry of Juan Manuel Pérez: A Zavala Country Native Son, Volume II: The Early Chapbooks (2022), Truth In The Time Of Chupacabras (2022), and Thirty Years Ago: Life And The First Gulf War (2023), as well as, the co-editor of the speculative poetry anthologies, Unleash Your Inner Chupacabra (2012; Archive Edition 2022) and The Call Of The Chupacabra (2018). Space in Pieces, Planet Of The Zombie Zonnets: Seasons One And Two, and Terror Of The Zombie Zonnets: Planet Of The Zombie Zonnets Season Three were nominated for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association Elgin Award. Juan is also the 2021 Horror Authors Guild’s Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award winner and a 2021 Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant recipient. He is the 2011–2012 San Antonio Poets Association Poet Laureate, the Lone Star State’s only El Chupacabras Poet Laureate (For Life), and a Zombie Texas Poet Of The Year. The former Gourd Dancer for the Memphis Tia Piah Big River Clan Warrior Society is also a Pushcart Prize Nominee as well as a SEATTAH Scholar (Striving For Excellence And Accountability In The Teaching Of Traditional American History) through the University of Dallas. Juan is a ten-year Navy Corpsman/Combat Marine Medic (1987–1997) with experience in the 1991 Persian Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and Desert Calm) attached to the 2nd Marines out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and was also a part of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew Relief Marine Air Group Task Force that went down to provide medical & linguistic support to a devastated Homestead, Florida. This two-time Teacher of the Year, along with his wife, Malia (a three-time Teacher of the Year and now Librarian), is a co-founder of The House of the Fighting Chupacabras Press. Juan was also recently honored as one of the top ten 2023 Corpus Christi Hooks All-Star Educators in partnership with Reliant Energy, honoring exceptional teachers in the Coastal Bend. The former migrant field worker, previously from La Pryor, Texas, currently worships his Creator, writes as well as conducts poetry and history workshops, and chases chupacabras in the Texas Coastal Bend Area. To learn more about him, go to https://www.juanmperez.com/ About the Cover Artist Kolega Soberanis is a visual artist from Yucatan, Mexico. He began his career at the Centro Estatal de Bellas Artes in the area of Plastic Arts in Merida, Mexico. He studied Graphic Design and Visual Communication at university, and studied Digital Creativity with the international agency “Grupo W” in Coahuila, Mexico as part of an intensive semester. His work has appeared in magazines such as Picnic Magazine, Chakota Mag, Kapix! Magazine, and Pinche Vida Zine, and he has participated in books such as Ediciones Invisibles, Sputnik, and Funda- ción Leer, in Argentina. Soberanis currently works independently as an illustrator for video game projects and editorial illustrations. You can find him at his portfolio and on Instagram: Portfolio: https://www.behance.net/kolega_soberanis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kolegasoberanis/ Praise for BURY MY HEART UNDER THE MARTIAN SKY:
“Weaving futurist horizons with mythical histories, while marrying the grim with the wonderous, Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky is a collection that will stand the test of time.” —Pedro Iniguez, Bram Stoker and Elgin Award-winning author of Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future “Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky is a chapbook collection of things alien on many levels. At times dark, otherworldly, and humorous, the poems are an offshoot of Pérez’s Mexican American/indigenous cultural background. Autobiographical at times, there be Chupacabras, Aztec historical references, mermaloids, the truth about cats, and other mythic allusions. This is a good read all around, and worthy of the poet’s best work.”—G. O. Clark, author of Tombstones: Selected Horror Poems “Bury My Heart Under the Martian Sky is a series of haiku ‘crowns,’ collections of haiku that work as a single poem, on fantastical and poignant topics. Pérez tackles both inner and outer aspects of horror, science fiction, and maybe, just maybe, science reality. Like any good haiku, these “crowns” are cause for meditation and discussion. Who gets to go into space and why? What happens when the colonized become the colonizers? And merfolk, well, how do they see our intrusions into what they would see as their ‘lands’? Not all the poems are as serious; there is fun and fantasy, too; still, Pérez finds room for rumination on the more serious ideas of space travel and perhaps colonization, and oh, yes, what to expect when the gods of the Aztecs return ‘As if they ever left . . .’” —Denise Dumars, author of Cajuns in Space and Mars Maundering. “Bury My Heart Under The Martian Sky” is a mesmerizing journey into the realms of the speculative, where the dance of words meets the tapestry of the universe. As the Poet Laureate of Corpus Christi, Texas, Pérez brings forth a unique voice that resonates with the heartbeat of his indigenous heritage. In this scifaiku odyssey, Pérez weaves a poetic spell that stretches from the enigmatic depths of the ocean, where mermaloids sing lullabies, to the ancient landscapes of South America visited by extraterrestrial beings. Each poem is an extraordinary example of science fiction haiku poetry at its finest, blending the familiar with the fantastic, inviting readers to explore the uncharted territories of imagination.” —Wendy Van Camp, Anaheim’s Poet Laureate Emerita and author of The Planets |
