In Screw the Wall, Juan Manuel Pérez answers the question: what can brown poetry do for you? He does so as he digs in and swings for and at the fences. This book of impactful poetry deals mainly with barriers-barriers erected by poverty, prejudice, culture, and language; barriers imagined and real; barriers conquered, and barriers left to be scaled. These poems range from the
humorous, to the satiric, to the poignant, to the nostalgic. A few of these worthwhile works might strike a nerve or two with their readers, but as Pérez reminds us about the border wall in his poem A Promising Letter to a Worrisome Trump, "No need to worry; We'll get over it!" Likewise, In Screw the Wall Juan Manuel Pérez has hit a home run deep over the wall.
- Alan Berecka