Gemini Gospel by Bianca Alyssa Pérez

Featuring an introduction by Texas Poet Laureate 2021-2022 Cyrus Cassells. 

Moving through grief and memory, this stunning debut collection takes us by the hand to experience all of what is sacred in the process of authentic self-discovery. Pérez’s poems boldly explore identity through her lineage of spirituality and Latina roots, even as they move into uncharted territory. In true Gemini fashion, the inherited self is entwined with the one that is discovered, loss is braided with luminous love, and no matter how deep grief runs, it brings us always back to tenderness: “It’s not easy / to remember to water the plants, / to shower and to forgive the body.” In elegizing her father, the poet expresses a tenderness that is so deeply touching to behold, it becomes a lesson in love itself: “The last thing we hope he hears / is the ocean & the sound of his boat’s hull / hitting a small wave and the seagulls— / god, I hope he hears the seagulls.”

Bianca Alyssa Pérez was born and raised in Mission, Texas—a small southern town bordering Mexico. She holds her MFA in Poetry from Texas State University, where she also teaches. She is the 2022-2023 Clark House Writer-In-Residence. You can find her writing in Magma Poetry, ReclamationATX, Psst! Press’s The Sappho Diaries, East French Press, the New York Quarterly, Re-side Zine, The Ice Colony Anthology, and The Porter House Review. She is also the co-host of the horror podcast, Basement Girls.

Press: Listed in Hip Latina's "12 Poetry Collections by Latina Poets Coming out in 2023"