Heart Like a Window, Mouth like a Cliff is a transgressive, yet surprisingly tender confrontation of what it means to want to flee the thing you need most. The speaker struggles through cultural assimilation and the pressure to "act" Mexican while dreaming of the privileges of whiteness. Borjas holds cultural traditions accountable for the gendered denial of Chicanas to individuate and love deeply without allowing one's love to consume the self. This is nothing new. This is colonization working through relationships within Chicanx families--how we learn love and perform it, how we filter it though alcohol abuse--how ultimately, we oppress the people we love most. This collection simultaneously reveres and destroys nostalgia, slips out of the story after a party where the reader can find God "drunk and dreaming." Think golden oldiez meets the punk attitude of No Doubt. Think pochas sipping gin martinis in lowriders cruising down Who Gives a Fuck Boulevard.
SARA BORJAS is a Xicanx pocha, is from the americas before it was stolen and its people were colonized, and is a Fresno poet. George Floyd. Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez. Heba Abu Nada. Xiaojie Tan. Say their names. Refaat Alareer. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff was published by Noemi Press in 2019 and won a 2020 American Book Award. Mustafa Al-Sawwaf. Breonna Taylor. Daoyou Feng. Sara was named one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets and the recipient of the 2014 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize. Hamza Al Dahdouh. Ahmaud Arbery. Suncha Kim. Sara has received fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, Ragdale, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Monson Arts, Art Omi, Storyknife and VCFA Postgraduate Writers' Conference. Her work can be found in The Rumpus, The Gettysburg Review, Catapult, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day by The Academy of American Poets, Alta and The Offing, amongst others. Sandra Bland. Soon Chung Park. Ahmed Fatima. She teaches innovative undergraduates at CSU East Bay, believes that all Black lives matter and all Palestinian lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized and Palestine is free. Sara lives in Oakland and stays rooted in Fresno. Find her @saraborhaz or at saraborjas. Free Palestine. Say their names.
Matt Ortile is an author and editor.
"I’m scared my vulnerability / makes me responsible for what / people do with us." so proud that we get to publish a new poem at @CatapultStory: "Complicit Poem," by Sara Borjas, author of HEART LIKE A WINDOW, MOUTH LIKE A CLIFF: https://t.co/bo10AQRpC2
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"I’m scared my vulnerability / makes me responsible for what / people do with us." Read this poem "Complicit Poem" by Sara Borjas, author of HEART LIKE A WINDOW, MOUTH LIKE A CLIFF: https://t.co/rDEVfcOZp0
Poet | @NorthwesternU MFA+MA | Editor @Mizna_ArabArt | 📖 BIRTHRIGHT (@buttonpoetry) & 🇵🇸 poetry anthology (@haymarketbooks) | Bookings @TSP_Writing | they/هو
(1/31) Sara Borjas's Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff Books like these remind me why I fell in love with poetry to begin with 🙏❤ #sealeychallenge2022 https://t.co/LR1DipwUpB