Plancha Press is an inprint of IR. At Plancha Press, we are committed to highlighting the poetry and prose of Texan writers.
As of 2024, we are not currently accepting any unsolicited manuscripts.
If you are a reviewer, please email us at infrarrealistareview@gmail.com to request advanced reader copies.
“The poems in Jorge Renaud’s exceptional collection are direct, elegant, and plain-spoken. They rally us with his discerning poet’s pen against the cruelty of massive incarceration. Twenty-seven years of imprisonment opened his poet’s ear and eye to depict loss, love, and liberation unapologetically. Renaud’s poems should be read time and again.”
–Teresa Palomo Acosta, author of Las Tejanas: 300 Years of History
“The The Restlessness of Bound Wrists is an urgent testimony of compassion and transformation from a poet who knows that to tell the truth…Renaud’s poetic voice never falters, never hesitates, ringing loud and clear…My heart broke, over and over again…”
–ire’ne lara silva, 2023 Texas Poet Laureate
Jorge Renaud’s The Restlessness of Bound Wrists is a meditation and high-voltage letter of resistance against the Texan carceral system. It’s a prayer of recognition and understanding to those touched by addiction. The speaker’s voice is a quiet lull reaching for those who dare to look at what’s happening beyond walls and not by indicting, or teaching them, but simply by levitating them off the page with directness into the state of ephemeral dreaming, the liminal birthed from loss of control. We’re captivated by Renaud’s confessional style, and honey and bourbon language. Renaud writes for the mothers, brothers and sisters who are freedom fighters through everyday acts while also nodding to resistance giants like raúlrsalinas and Assata Shakur.
Since his last release from prison in 2008 Jorge Renaud has been a policy analyst and community organizer at various social justice organizations, among them the Texas Center for Justice and Equity, Grassroots Leadership, the Prison Policy Initiative, and Latino Justice PRLDEF. Jorge was honored to be selected as the 2020 Poet in Residence by the Civil Rights Corps and the 2021 Writer in Residence at the Texas After Violence Project. He is the proud father of Katie, a woman who enchants and astonishes and befuddles him in equal measure. Jorge believes poetry should be left to younger spirits yet was somehow persuaded to publish a book by the vatas lorcas at Infrarrealista Review. The Restlessness of Bound Wrists is forthcoming in 2025 with Plancha Press. He is guided by one maxim–No human is disposable.
Watch a PBS Brief but Spectacular segment featuring Jorge Renaud here.
Peppermint is Amber Isaac’s debut full-length poetry collection. Peppermint is for the queers raised on farms, horror for movie lovers, and for anyone who has fallen in love with the Coca Cola bottles your lover leaves behind on the nightstand.
Peppermint guides you through the speaker’s childhood memories in rural Missouri, the haunting and erotic scenes from films that stay with the speaker, memories of fucking in a cemetery while struggling to pay the rent, and subtle moments that led to the discovery of her queer trans identity.
References include but are not limited to: In Cold Blood, Alien, Goodfellas, poppers, kayfabe, Magic the Gathering, Prince, Goya, Steve McQueen, Taylor Swift t-shirts, Avril Lavigne, and Gregg Araki.
Amber Isaac is a queer trans writer from the Midwest. Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, Coachella Review, and Cimarron Review. They are the Reviews Editor at Infrarrealista Review.
PRAISE FOR AMAPOLASONG:
“It’s a reason for celebration! A new book by our hero! Jacinto Jesús Cardona’s work goes straight to the soul, penetrates chatter, clarifies memory, air, hope and precious humanity.”
—NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems, Cast Away: Poems for Our Time, The Tiny Journalist
“Amapolasong makes me want to have libro breath, breath made from reading, saying, and singing the jaunty, wry and wise Star-Spangled Spanglish captured by poeta, Jacinto Jesús Cardona. These pages are a warm and uplifting Chicano embrace offered by the unique and singular lexicon of this true poeta de la gente. Cardona delivers a lyrical memoir novella set as histories and testimonios essential to understand the region of South Texas, filled with characters like the Number One Small-Town Fry Cook, Don Anguiano, el mayor piscador, and the poet himself appearing in a number of poems, as a teenage bookish bato who struggles with baseball, but not with his khakis, his joyful curiosity, or his sparkling spinners. This is a book that opens the door the magical voice-world unique to the language of our bilingual people, and its hard truths are hard-won with so much tenderness for a people and so much music in its tenderness. Lleno de encantos, these poems will keep readers of all ages inspired and wondering what magical word-paquete will star-spangle-sparkle up the next line. This word-mundo is a creative festival of poems that forms an añil bath for anyone needing a thought-cleanse from too much of today’s muck and mugrero.”
—NATALIA TREVIÑO, VirginX
“Amapolasong is a juicy linguistic experience. Wondrous. These poems are succulent. They quench the reader’s soul in these terribly parched American times.”
—LORI MARIE CARLSON-HIJUELOS, Cool Salsa, A Path to the World: Becoming You
I remember riding my fenderless bike
to la panadería del pueblo
sometimes I would go alone
sometimes I would dream
I took abuelo by the hand
I remember pan dulce tasting even sweeter
after confessing my sins
at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church
nothing like dulcified bread
for crucified bones
I remember standing in front of the glass displays
telling el panadero I’ll take one of these
and one of those and one of these
unlike the cool pachuco who came in
asking for pan de polvo un regalo
y un hueso azucarado to go
I had not mastered the names of pan dulce
so imagine my thrill imagine the authority
in my chavalón bones when I returned
asking for dos huesos azucarados
two sugared bones to go
I remember pan dulce
la Virgen de Guadalupe
bordered by blue neon lights
and how the smell of canela
reminded me of abuelito’s piloncillo skin
JACINTO JESÚS CARDONA was born in Palacios, Texas, and grew up in Alice the Hub of South Texas. He lives with his family in San Antonio, Texas, and currently teaches English and creative writing at Incarnate Word High School.
Infrarrealista Review is a literary nonprofit dedicated to publishing Tejanx voices.
