In this remarkable book, lyric fabulist Manuel Paul López embeds parallel worlds that unite dreamtime and memory's "syllabus of smoke." Episodes relate the perils of youth and the absurdity of a "state-sanctioned self" amid the social fevers here and now, along with the exquisitely berserk stagecraft needed to mount a present-day rebellion of the senses. Parading across this federated horizon of possibility are a series of scene changes that emerge abruptly into telescopic view: Galaga arcades, panaderías, baseball fields, liquor stores, and kiosks by way of YouTube videos, gewgaw explosives, fire ants, and rosin bags. The breadth of experience connects Montevideo and El Salvador to Langley, Virginia, and California's Imperial County where the author's homeboy, Nestor–neighborhood peludo, sorcerer, artist-philosopher, and alter-ego–emerges as one of our great contemporary literary figures. Nerve Curriculum is the thrilling confirmation of a unique élan that can fuel the Latinx imagination. López accommodates us with ample poetic vitality and a surrealist regard for releasing personhood from having to "live perpetually on the verge of living."
– Roberto Tejada 

Manuel Paul López's books include Nerve Curriculum (Futurepoem), These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Earnest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories: In the Time of Covid and Uprising (City Works Press), Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press), and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works Press), all three generated from a community-based writers' workshop of the same name that he's co-facilitated since 2016 in Southeast San Diego. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.