San Antonio poet Claudia Delfina Cardona can’t help but write about home. In What Remains, Cardona’s new chapbook, the chambers of her heart look like café and bakery Mi Tierra, the music of mariachis or cumbia plays endlessly, and the reader follows her through every park in San Antonio. Set in the colorful, poetic universe of her city, the collection is a study of desire, longing, and loss, seen both through personal heartbreak and gentrification in a changing city.
The short chapbook was released earlier this fall from Host Publications, an Austin-based small press that publishes primarily women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ2+ writers. Cardona spoke with the Observer about Austin and San Antonio’s literary scenes, her philosophy of writing poetry as archiving, and her advice for young Texan poets.
Texas Observer: Tell me about the title of your collection.
