Dream of the Bird Tattoo

Winner of the 2026 Reading the West Award for Poetry

From the author of The Handyman's Guide to End Times comes a new poetry collection celebrating the life and grieving the death of Morales's father.

In this brilliantly rendered collection—the author’s fourth—Juan J. Morales explores love and grief after the death of his father. Morales weaves his father’s personality, his childhood in Puerto Rico, and his service in the US military with his own interest in life after death. In these poems he guides the reader through ghost hunts, conversations with mediums, a series of dreams in which he and his father work through his father’s crossing over together, and his ultimate acceptance of this monumental loss. Dream of the Bird Tattoo beautifully showcases how our loved ones continue to live on in our memories and actions.