Dream of the Chook Tattoo: Poems and Sueñitos
By Juan J. Morales
College of New Mexico Press | 2025 | 136 pages
In the primary poem of Juan Morales’s latest guide, Dream of the Chook Tattoo, the poet ruminates on avocados in Puerto Rico earlier than segueing into the current passing of his Puerto Rican aunts and uncles. By the top of the poem, the narrator’s personal father has died: “final week we misplaced him, / a person who deliberate to return for / yet another avocado.”
From there, Morales’s father, Jose, turns into the beating coronary heart of Dream of the Chook Tattoo as these beautiful poems transfer between japanese Colorado, the place Jose lived, and Puerto Rico, the place he grew up. Over greater than 80 pages, Morales retains his gaze, coronary heart, and lyric targeted on Jose’s demise and Morales “wanting ahead in full loss.”
Dream of the Chook Tattoo is an ode to his father, a memoir-in-poems a couple of son’s grief—a shocking, staggeringly lovely, and unflinching take a look at Morales as he offers with Jose’s passing.
Morales writes practically each poem in accessible narrative kind and thru that model, we unravel who Jose Morales was. We find out about his propensity to curse: “I may be a little bit man, however I’ll stomp your ass throughout this parking zone,” he yells at an insurance coverage agent. We find out about his humor: “After I die, I’m going to be buried with my checkbook, / so everytime you spend cash, you’ll have / to inform me good day,” he jokes. We be taught concerning the medals, together with the Bronze Star and Purple Coronary heart, his father received throughout the Korean Conflict. In clear element, these highly effective poems allow us to perceive the person Morales misplaced.
Dream of the Chook Tattoo begins with Jose’s demise and strikes throughout the yr as Morales navigates his loss whereas processing who he’s with out his father in his life. A number of poems gives Jose’s humorous anecdotes, every titled, “Shit my Puerto Rican Father Stated.” Many additionally painting the poet’s goals of his father. Dream of the Chook Tattoo displays upon demise and loss again and again simply as waves batter the Puerto Rican shoreline within the prolonged poem, “The Waves, or Las Olas.” Right here, Morales writes, “His coronary heart price / floats away, adrift, out to sea / over again. The heartbreak eases / to shore, tangled with the clumps / of seaweed and particles.”
Dream of the Chook Tattoo is highly effective and heartbreaking. In an early poem, Morales searches for a photograph of his father from his time within the navy: “If the photograph is / actually misplaced, I’ll resume / looking out till / I can think about it, / such as you, / by no means really misplaced.” That looking out is strictly what Dream of the Chook Tattoo does, in search of and discovering new and wonderful methods to share the poet-son’s story of “you, my lovely father” to course of his lovely, enduring grief.
