Juan Morales Reading New Poetry at Colorado State University, Pueblo

Colorado State University, Pueblo | 2200 Bonforte Blvd., Pueblo, CO, 81001

Author Juan J. Morales and the book cover for Dream of the Bird Tattoo, Poems and Sueñitos.

Juan J. Morales celebrates his new book, Dream of the Bird Tattoo: Poems and Sueñitos, with a reading at Colorado State University, Pueblo.

In this brilliantly rendered collection—the author’s fourth—Morales explores love and grief after the death of his father. He weaves his father’s personality, his childhood in Puerto Rico, and his service in the US military with his own interest in life after death. In these poems he guides the reader through ghost hunts, conversations with mediums, a series of dreams in which he and his father work through his father’s crossing over together, and his ultimate acceptance of this monumental loss. Dream of the Bird Tattoo beautifully showcases how our loved ones continue to live on in our memories and actions.

Dream of the Bird Tattoo is part of the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series.

 

“With Dream of the Bird Tattoo, Juan J. Morales has created a stunning memoir-in-poems about his father’s death and the grief that follows. This collection is honest, powerful, and heartbreaking.”
– Sean Prentiss, author of Crosscut: Poems

“In his latest collection, Dream of the Bird Tattoo, Juan Morales beautifully honors all of the permutations of grief, not only for a father but the mistreatment of the oldest US colony, Puerto Rico. Reading this intimate collection, a reader is welcomed into dreams of lighthouses and tattoos as we become the long distant relative twice removed listening to the details a family has to process when saying goodbye to a loved one. As always with Morales’ work, there are moments of levity in the poems “Excerpt from Shit My Puerto Rican Father Said” where we are reminded that what can appear as small conversations at one moment become the largest memories later.”
– Luivette Resto, author of Living on Islands Not Found on Maps