A Review of The Restlessness of Bound Wrists by Jorge Antonio Renaud

mónica teresa ortiz
Jul 22
5 min read

Updated: Jul 22

The Restlessness of Bound Wrists by Jorge Antonio Renaud | Plancha Press | January 2025 | Page Count: 69 | ISBN: 9798218637606

Everything I encounter about Jorge Antonio Renaud begins with a similar version of: I first met Jorge… As in, all who meet him remember that moment. So, I will start my review the same. I first met Jorge Antonio Renaud by accident. I was walking down east on 26^th Street, in the shade of the University of Texas at Austin architecture, ducking in and out of awkwardly parked cars, leaving the sidewalk as a small tight path. This was September of 2019, so Austin still burned with the aftertaste of summer. I was looking for the entrance into the law school where geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore would be the keynote speaker for the Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform: From the Local to the Global symposium. Poets Natalie Diaz and Reginald Dwayne Betts would be doing the opening reading and Roger Reeves would be moderating. That was why I worked a morning shift at my job at a local coffee shop, so I could have the afternoon to myself and attend, but I hadn’t registered. So, the possibility of not being allowed in loomed. I was not deterred.

A tall man appeared from somewhere behind me and almost fell in step with me. He immediately introduced himself as Jorge. Maybe he asked me if I knew where the auditorium was, but I did not know exactly where the location was; we were both headed there. Sheepishly, I admitted I didn’t have a badge or hadn’t RSVPed, so I hoped to sneak in. I had been reading some of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work and wanted to learn more about geography and abolition. The man smiled and said not to worry. When we found the registration table, he checked himself into the woman in charge. Then he said that I was with him, and we were allowed to pass without a question.

Turns out “Jorge” was Jorge Antonio Renaud, a panelist on a panel called “Reckoning with Violence.” Although I did not see Jorge again during the symposium, I did not forget the kindness. He told me he wrote, and eventually, I would also discover Jorge is a poet, and so much more.

Fast forward to 2025. The editors of Infrarrealista Review announce the publication of Jorge’s poetry collection, The Restlessness of Bound Wrists. The book opens with two introductions from The Sentencing Project’s Bob Libal and Texas After Violence Project’s Gabriel Solis – old comrades from a decade ago in Austin – as well as a back cover blurb from brilliant poet Faylita Hicks. There is a lot of Texas love surrounding Jorge’s book. The first poem, perfectly titled, “12^th and Chicon,” derives its name from one of Austin’s most famous intersections. IYKYK. You can google it, and nearly every article will talk about what the intersection was like before gentrification, before the craft cocktail bars moved in. The speaker rented a room there, and it’s a fitting opening for the book, as we enter the poet’s experience, where his dreams “like spiderwebs // stick to my skull.” It’s a poem that returns to clanging of guards’ iron sticks on the bars, as Jorge’s haunting lines recall the memory, “as I lie there // curled around my memories. // In the end // I cannot say // if I am dreaming // or dead.” The speaker of the poem encounters “the sellers // the dealers // the buyers // the lost.” As readers, we follow the poet’s struggle against old addictions, that “desperate song” calling for him. While he can hear, it seems he won’t answer.

Jorge Antonio Renaud immediately follows this stunning opening poem with “Lamentation for Literature,” and each stanza begins with “We will not read this book unless…” and this acts as a reminder that these poems are not just poems, but memories and commitments to the poet’s past life and the one he dreams of in the future. I don’t want to call these poems hopeful, because the lines are rooted in ghostly matters, but deep compassion pumps blood to each word – for the characters and speakers in the poems. The poems are honest struggles with the brutality of carcerality and the afterlife of it. Many of the other poems in the collection are gut wrenching – a raspiness of violence wraps itself around the words, as in the poem, “It’s news to me.” Jorge ends the poem with the stanza, “If that wracked me once, // if that cracked my shell // and spilled humanity // upon the concrete floor, // it moves me little now.”

The title poem, “The Restlessness of Bound Wrists,” encapsulates the emotions and praxis of the collection with intimate echoing lines: “know // the restlessness // of bound wrists, // chafed // not by iron // but by grief // of lost meetings, // once held // behind welcoming necks.” We also find a poem for legendary poet, raúlrsalinas, that shifts between Spanish and English. It’s a beautiful ode that reminds us to look for those who came before us, to greet them by their names, and to love them even more after they are gone.

All in all, this is a poet who has lived a life and offers poems as testimonies of the lives he has survived. We find ourselves following what Faylita Hicks calls the “haunted landscapes of carceral America with language as intimate as it is incendiary.” The poems mourn and grieve but they also remember and witness and name the wreckage of incarceration. Harm begets harm. The Restlessness of Bound Wrists paint honest experiences of how to continue beyond our past and the ways that language itself can interrupt cycles of violence. Jorge’s not a quiet poet and these are not quiet poems. They are disruptions and interventions against narratives and violent systems that imprison, surveil, and murder relentlessly. After 2020, the idea of abolition became co-opted by some, and did not necessarily carry the same intentions. But in Jorge’s hands, these poems demand an audience, to be heard, to be read, and truly reckon with state and interpersonal violence. Jorge Antonio Renaud’s book reminds us, again and again, that “Until all of us are Free,” includes everyone, especially “that one // at the end // of the run” with “his singular vileness // because that one // that one, too // is my brother.”

mónica teresa ortiz is a poet and critic born, raised, and based in Texas. Their poems have appeared in ANMLY, Scalawag, and Poetry Daily. mónica has published several chapbooks, including Autobiography of a Semi-Romantic Anarchist (Host Publications, 2019), Have You Ever Dreamed of Flamingos? (Garden Party Collective, 2023), Muted Blood (Black Radish, 2018), and a full-length collection, Book of Provocations (Host Publications, 2024). They write nonfiction reviews for the Book Page and published their first desk-reviewed book review, Prehistories of the War on Terror: A Critical Genealogy, for Allegra Lab. mónica calls us to commit to the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed people.