Juárez, Cruz Alejandra Lucas: Red Seed: Poems for Luno

Cardboard House Press, paperback

Translated by Wendy Call & Whitney DeVos

Publication Date: March 6, 2026

Publisher Marketing: Mexican poet Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez is the first woman to publish a bilingual Tutunakú-Spanish book of poetry; this trilingual chapbook draws from Xlaktsuman papa' / Las hijas del Luno (2021), her debut poetry collection. The subtitle, "Poems for Luno," uses the masculine version of the Spanish word for moon (the feminine "luna"), referencing the Tutunakú belief that the moon (papa') is the metaphorical father of all women. Papa' / Luno bestows the gift of their womanhood, as regulator of the menstrual cycle; his monthly arrival is characterized as an amorous affair. This erotic relation is celebrated in Lucas Juárez's poems, which weave together images of Luno as he appears to the speaker—and to her maternal ancestors—in dreams, quotidian moments, and Tukunakú stories.

Through a voice at once intimate and collective, Lucas Juárez expands the powerful presence of Tutunakú roots to open up territories and to interweave desirous bodies, dream relationships, and the memories of women ancestors. This beautiful translation by Wendy Call and Whitney DeVos, in a precious handmade edition, affirms the trilingual (Tutunakú, Spanish and English) as an ethical strategy of listening to and translating the world. Red Seed collects twelve poems of women's sexualities and spirits in which body, language and territory are political spaces that Indigenous memory expands within and renews.—Maricela Guerrero, author of The Dream of Every Cell