NEW SEPTEMBER 2026
“Angelica Esquivel navigates the end of the world armed with a mermaid-shaped pocketknife, perfume, obsidian mirrors, and language that transmutes trespass and undoes space and time. These poems break history in multiple tongues that lick inherited wounds while savoring the salty sweet of bodies that stagger ‘drunk on desire and words’ into a future that remembers and a future that forgets in unequal measure. This is a divinatory lyric, a work of magic and power that burns in order to plant new seeds.”
—Stephanie Heit, author of Psych Murders “Sometimes dreamlike, but always sharply precise, A Casual Apocalypse in Acapulco balances a quiet devastation with rich cultural imagery—corn husks, lotería cards, jelly sandals. In the poem ‘we are everything we have ever been,’ she writes: ‘what i wanted / was perfect / memory / but our blood / is a broken / historical record’—Esquivel sends us back in time, to glimpses of childhood memories, yes, and even further to precolonial México, expertly stitching together a vividly colored quilt of recollection. These striking poems grapple with visions of a before and an after—and Esquivel’s words carry us through the landscape of the aftermath.” --Nadia Mota, author of La Chiflada “A Casual Apocalypse in Acapulco journeys a kaleidoscope of various dreads: the dread of ancestry and trauma, the dread of post-colonialism and patriarchal downpour (to name a few), engulfing us with a lyrically lush and emotional experience. But despite the looming inevitability, in poems like ‘Lengua,’ Esquivel reminds us we ‘must learn to honor without needing to lay claim, must learn to find solace in the shape of Turtle Island.’” —Erik Manuel Soto, Vallejo, CA Poet Laureate & author of Inside the Umber Iris, winner of the Gronk Nicandro prize for poetry 42 pages | A5 5.83 x 8.27 in. | 2026 ISBN-13: 978-1-958600-14-6 (paperback) $15 |
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Angelica Esquivel (she/her) is a Xicana writer and artist from Fostoria, Ohio. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Barrelhouse, and Beloit Poetry Journal. She received the 2021 Zocalo Poetry Prize, the 2022 Roadrunner Review Cover Art Prize, and is the inaugural 2025 Writer in Residence of Ypsilanti, Michigan. She lives in Chicago. angelicaesquivel.com