Gutierrez’ s poems illuminate parallels between a personal sense of indigenized identity and the legacy of colonialism via the California Mission system and its impact on the local ecology. --- Our people need new prayers from our first tongues. Nueva Cuenta shows that a soul in its lucid wandering is both the presentation of mathematical brilliance and visceral mystery; that the poet is the incarnation in a circle of instructors who crafts reminders that origin is future and every line of our story is food for beauty and resistance. Here is a song to take with you on our fight for liberation; to take with us on all of our returns to earth and essence. Be fit for the run… rise en masse. — Tongo Eisen-Martin