POETRY BY JUAN MANUEL PEREZ

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 the award-wining poetic-memoir, Thirty Years Ago: Life and the First Gulf War (2023) and the Mexican-American Barrio Horror Novel-In-Verse, La Santa Madre Tamalera (2023). He is a Horror Authors Guild’s Inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award winner and a recipient of the Horror Writers Association Diversity Grant, among many other prestigious awards.

He is a former migrant worker. To learn more about this award-winning poet, combat vet, history teacher, and Native American Gourd Dancer, please check out his official HERE

DA’GREEN-GONE-GONE

as we blasted off
it came to Vital Control
but we escaped it

we watched in horror
loud screams from computer screens
but we escaped it

we saw it growing
from the ship’s portal windows
but we escaped it

from Captain City
to opposite frigid rings
but we escaped it

it was everywhere
on every inch of our world
but we escaped it

many months now since
on board things have gotten weird
we can escape it

food rations: stolen
matters: on bloody, green hands
…did we escape it?

ROBOTS IN THE WIND

if not for the wind
silence is the only sound
among scattered bones

if not for the winds
mechanical hopes astray
littering the land

if not for the wind
new history of war fades
and all that once moved

if not for the wind
for all of what now remains
rests in suspension

if not for the wind
programmed usefulness recedes
war machines stand down

if not for the wind
instruments without purpose
face the shifting wind

if not for the wind
created killed creator
nothing. left. to. do.

WHAT DOGS KNOW ABOUT CATS

cats are finicky
find someone that doesn’t know
someone from this world

at the master’s door
gazing to see who it is
greeting like old friends

master talks to them
more than he talks to his kind
odd for the humans

they ask for special
the master always complies
ice box full of it

routine sacrifice
he will give and give again
what he calls a meal

the cats stay happy
so they return when hungry
at least once a week

as for the special
his name was Bob or something
master disliked him

cats are destroyers
find something they haven’t touched
since the beginning

we’ve leaned into peace
break from perpetual war
calm, with watchful eyes

the face of the Sphinx
hides the forgotten story
a war nearly won

my kind almost gone
if not for our new masters
balancing the power

his face now the Sphinx’s
yet with no true hold on cats
just long arrangements

although man now rules
cats will surely persevere  
end longstanding peace

even if man fails
master will be kept alive
he feeds them mankind

cats are liquid
find a place they can’t get in
you will be lying

dogs know the secret
that which baffles master’s kind
not really magic

cats are not from here
forgotten place among stars
wish they would return

cats know that we know
they will kill to keep it hid
ask master for me

those that come weekly
to eat master’s sacrifice
report to others

liquids are thoughts too
for I have spoken this truth
they will find me out

some day they will come
I will be those cold pieces
casualty of war