Red Seed: Poems for Luno
Tsitsokgo talhtsí: kamaxanatliw papa' / Semilla roja: Poemas para Luno
by Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez
translated by Wendy Call and Whitney DeVos
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 characterised 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.
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Table of Contents
Translator’s Note: Meeting the Daughters of Luno
¿Tii maa papa’?
¿Quién es Luno? / Who Is Luno?
Kintse’ xtalapaxkin papa’
Mi madre es amante de Luno / My Mother Is Father Moon’s Lover
Tamanixni’
Sueño / Dream
Xlimakgtó kmanixnilh
Segundo sueño / Another Dream
Xlimagtutu kmanixnilh / Tercer sueño
Dream Three
Xlimagtati kmanixnilh
Cuarto sueño / Dream Four
Nana Tsívita I
Nana Tsívita II
Nana Tsívita III
Litutunaaku
Tantsulut
Pajaro Tantsulut
Tantsulut Bird
Xtachuwini nti aknú
La voz del enterrado
The Voice of the Buried
Notes on Poems
Previous Publications
Audio Book Information
About the Author
About the Translators
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Paperback Edition
48 pages. Printed and hand-sewn at Descentro de Poesía, RI, USA. Exposed smyth-sewn bound, card cover and endpapers. Front cover plum maroon card with grey-silver emboss. Printed on quality speckletone paper.
ISBN: 9781945720413
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Press, reviews, endorsements
“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
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About the Author
Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez is author of the bilingual Tutunakú-Spanish poetry collection Xlaktsuman papa’ / Las hijas de Luno (2021). Originally from Tuxtla, Zapotitlán de Méndez, Puebla, Mexico, she studied language and culture at the Intercultural University of the State of Puebla. In 2022 she received her second fellowship from the prestigious National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA), in the category of poetry in Indigenous languages. Her comic Laktsuman xla kuxi’ / Mujeres maíz, which won fourth place in a nationwide contest for comics in Indigenous languages, was published by Mexico’s National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI). She works as a Tutunakú-Spanish translator, offers workshops and courses in creative writing, and has organised forums for the dissemination of literature in Indigenous languages.
About the Translators
Wendy Call is author, co-editor, or translator of nine books. Most recently, she translated Irma Pineda’s Stolen Flower (Yale University Press, 2025) and co-translated the award-winning How to be a Good Savage and Other Poems, by Mikeas Sánchez (Milkweed, 2024). She is currently writing a book about sense of place and co-edits Best Literary Translations, published annually by Deep Vellum. She lives in Seattle, on Duwamish land, and in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Mixtec and Zapotec land.
Whitney DeVos is a scholar, translator, and editor based in Mexico City. She specializes in the literatures of Abiayala/Afro-/Latinoamérica, focusing on poetry and its relationship to the state. From the Spanish, she has translated or co-translated four collections of poetry and three chapbooks. Much of her current work focuses on lenguas originarias, the Indigenous languages of the Americas, and has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and MacDowell, among other places. She is coeditor of Ruge el bosque, a series of plurilingual ecopoetry anthologies, and producer of the experimental podcast Ecoteca, each aimed at a global Hispanophone audience.
