the past is a jean jacket

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.

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