Tommy Archuleta, Susto

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Purchase Susto by calling the store to order (505) 988-4226.

Surreal yet earthbound, orphaned yet mothered more than most, comforting yet disturbing— Tommy Archuleta’s Susto surveys many settings: the body, the soul, the terrain the soul encounters upon leaving the body. But the setting is also the high desert landscape that is the poet’s northern New Mexico home, a land whose beauty today is as silencing and brutal as was the colonization of the region and her Anasazi descendants by Archuleta’s Spanish antipasados.

In Susto, loss is everywhere to be found, though this work is not merely a concerted meditation on lament. Rather, it is part unearthed family album; part unlocked diary; part ode to motherhood and her various forms; part manual on preparing for a happy death; and part primer on the ancient art of curanderismo, whereby plants and roots are prepared for treating all manner of ills a mind and body might face.

About the Author

Tommy Archuleta is a mental health counselor and substance abuse counselor for the New Mexico Corrections Department. Most recently his poems have appeared in the New England Review, Laurel Review, Lily Poetry Review, The Cortland Review, Guesthouse, and the Poem-a-Day series sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. His debut full-length collection of poems, Susto, has been selected as a 2023 Mountain/West Poetry Series by the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University; its publication made possible by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. Tommy lives and writes on the Cochiti Reservation.