Award Winner of the the Naomi Shihab Nye First Book of Poetry Award from the Texas Institute of Letters
A Debutiful Best Debut Book of 2025
why am i nostalgic for the shitty times in my life?
Reminiscent of being in a heavily postered room with rock music blasting, Cloud Delfina Cardona's debut collection the past is a jean jacket is a time capsule of a 90s queer, Latinx teenhood.
Cardona's speaker explores their gender through sex and relationships, searches for belonging in their family lineage, and copes with depression using movies, indie bands, cigarettes, and Tumblr.
Featuring compelling visual collages and inventive imagery throughout, these poems are firmly rooted in Southern Texas. Cardona brings readers to a jukebox on S. LBJ Drive, underneath a Catholic girls high school, and to "San Marcos sunsets above the H-E-B parking lot" with weighted and poignant reflection. Each careful line produces a soundtrack to a passionate coming-of-age and implores us all to be gentle, yet honest, with our younger selves.
Evocative and blunt, the past is a jean jacket asks the essential existential questions: "where did all the wishes of my ancestors go? / what memory of me will play in someone's head before i die for the final time?"
the past is a jean jacket was selected by Ashley M. Jones for the 2024 Hub City Press BIPOC Poetry Series.
About the Author :
Cloud Delfina Cardona (she/they) is an artist, writer, and book cover designer from San Antonio, Texas. She is the author of What Remains, winner of the Host Publications Chapbook Prize. She is the co-founder of Infrarrealista Review, a literary nonprofit that publishes Texan voices. Their poetry can be found in The Offing, Prairie Schooner, The Boiler, The Los Angeles Review, and more. She currently works as an associate for Letras Latinas and moonlights as DJ Mexistentialism. She believes in a free Palestine.
Review :
“In the past is a jean jacket, Cloud Delfina Cardona brings to vivid life the loneliness of teenhood and the estranging effect of performing to expectations, confronting with great skill and heart the harmful effects of pop culture’s ‘white propaganda’ on a young sense of self. Against a backdrop of 90s media, with winsome humor and profound ache, Cardona plumbs deep relational questions and dynamics, running lines along the untangleable threads of desire and culture. This beautiful, compassionate, fresh collection offers no false solace but rather the grounding, emboldening invitation to break the silences of shame, to bring violently denied selves back to life, to reach for abundance.” —Gabrielle Bates, author of Judas Goat
“Reading Cloud Delfina Cardona’s poetry is like passing notes in class, emo lyrics and Chicanismos scribbled alongside with the hottest chisme. In the past is a jean jacket, Cardona crafts scenes of queer brown girlhood against the backdrop of South and Central Tejas. This collection exposes time for the flimsy construct it is, bringing together ‘the unfamiliar / whispers of antepasados’ and grief for ‘an impossible life.’ This book is a must-read for la cultura, for brown kids who are their ancestors’ queerest dreams. Cardona asks, ‘how do you resolve the person you were / into the person you are?’ The answer lies within the past is a jean jacket.” —SG Huerta, author of Burns
“A mastery of the understated, an effortless shot to the heart. Within these pages I feel Courtney Love, I taste nicotine/lip gloss, and I see a writer who is in full control. This book will give you what you want, because sometimes we desperately need to be devastated, or in love, or to disappear.” —Amber Isaac, author of Peppermint
“Cloud Delfina Cardona's the past is a jean jacket is wondrous, a cross-faded dream state of poetic exploration, playfulness, and talent that could only come out of San Anto. Cardona eschews nostalgia for the real and honest, ruminating on pop culture of yesteryear, the tías in our lives, and the Texas sky to ask devastating questions laced with melancholy and love. There is no sugar coating of the past in these poems but affectionate and blunt explorations of the self that feel vulnerable yet just right. Each poem results in a momentary state of disassociation that segues into new realities, a reborn sense of the self for the speaker and reader. Cardona is our Poet Laureate of Longing; I give my salute.” —Reyes Ramirez, author of El Rey of Gold Teeth
“Cardona is a master in pinpointing the exquisite details & delicate language of desire, capturing what it means to be brown in the midst of the whiteness of an all-American indie/alternative subculture. the past is a jean jacket blurs all stereotypes of Tejanas everywhere. This will be a classic read for Latinx indie misfits 4-ever~.” —Juania Sueños
